Ghost in the Machine
by Whozawhatcha
Summary: Black 2 Nuzlocke: Life sucks when you have the worst job in the pokemon universe. I'm just a gal trying to make ends meet, but because of shooting stars, I might get a few wishes for me. Or someone else will get a death wish on me. I'm not sure yet. All I know is I didn't ask for any of this extra complicated stuff and just want to take the train and land a better job.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

 **A Black 2 Nuzlocke**  
 **Unwittingly a ghost/steel/psychic-locke by sheer circumstance**  
 **Loosely based on the Great Depression period**  
 **I make no promises**  
 **Newly edited for a MATURE disclaimer because the second chapter is getting gritty**

 **Rules:**

 **1) Catch new route pokemon**

 **2) Nickname 'em**

 **3) I randomized the hidden grottos/static pokemon**

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* * *

 **"Yo listen up, here's the story**

 **About a little guy that lives in a blue world**

 **And all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue**

 **Like him, inside and outside"**

 _ **I'm Blue _ Eiffel 65**_

* * *

This story begins with a bit of trivia: what do YOU think the worst job in the pokemon world is?

I can think of a few. A garbage man? Garbage sucks, no matter what. How about a shit scooper? Maybe construction workers, pulling all nighters to repair gyms. That would suck, but at least construction workers get amenities and overtime to make up for it. Or a roadkill collector. That's a job everyone wants. I hope you don't have a pachirisu as a pet, because you're gonna be picking up their flat pancakes all the time.

But no. Certainly, all of these jobs suck. The worst job in the world?

Well. Pokemon battling is pretty barbaric, in my humble opinion. After all, someone's gotta clean up all your mauled, disemboweled pokemon when you muck it up at a gym battle.

The job in question is a cremator. A mortician. An undertaker, if you will. My name is Josephine Ebele, and I get to cremate dead pokemon bodies for shit pay.

I flip through my paperwork with a huff. Four more to the furnace today. Unfortunately, all these young trainers battling Cheren decided that even though they'd had their purrloins and lillipups for barely a few days that they were attached enough to request to keep the remains. And a special middle bird for the kid with an Onix who STILL managed to let it die. Because of you, kid, I have to fire up the big furnace, and I didn't need that pain in the ass to top off my day.

Yet, here I am. I punch the keys and pull the levers, and the giant metal cradle roars to life with an ear-splitting shriek. I wince and curse the old pipes under my breath as the coils below begin to heat. Even though it's been so long since the last time I turned on the furnace, it is still hot. The entire room is always sweltering like a melting vanillish on a hot summer's day. And me? I am that vanillish, sweating bullets and gleaming like some smelly, sticky Greek god.

I turn on the small furnace again, and the metal stings my hand. Still hot from yesterday. Then, I reach for my fire proximity suit. I'm supposed to wear it before even operating the furnaces, but by the time I wrangle myself into this space suit, the smaller furnace will be ready to operate. I stick my legs into the thick fabric pants, tug them up, zip and button. I shove my feet into bloated boots, tie them tight and latch them to the pants. I reach for the coat, zip and button again, grab the belt and lash it around my waist. Then, I grab the hood with the massive neck shroud, shove it down on my head, and latch it to the shoulders. Last, I pull the gloves on.

I glare at myself in the reflection of the heating metal. I look like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz spawned a demon child with the Michelin Man.

But hey, that's what you get when you work full time minimum wage doing the job no one wants to do. A fat suit, the smell of death, and the world's dumbest pokemon partner.

Before anything, I tromp to the back where there are two mining carts, and I push one under a funnel. I tug the cap open and coal pours out into the metal with a sound like hail on a tin roof. I wait for the cart to fill, close the funnel, and grab my shovel. I push the cart to the massive furnace that is nearly the size of a small building. Opening the rear panel, the air blasts me like a heat wave, searing even through the fire proximity suit. I dig the shovel into the coal and throw it deep inside. The black coals whiten inside the furnace, and I begin the monotonous chore of filling this furnace. Cremating an onix is different from cremating flesh organisms. To melt an onix down, this furnace has to reach a scorching 1,200 degrees Celsius before I can pour the molten rock into the appropriate urn.

So I shovel coal into the furnace until that familiar twinge stabs my lower back and until the mining cart is empty. I go back for two more loads because this furnace is massive and the onix itself is an above average 29 feet, and young to boot. If that kid hadn't squandered such an exotic and powerful pokemon on a normal gym like an idiot, it might have grown into a beautiful Steelix. And a record-smashing length, too.

Instead, with the furnace loaded up and gaining heat, I turn the knobs to add pressure and hold the heat in. Then, I open the door from the furnace room and step into a clinical white room. I double check the two purrloin and the lillipup inside, and make sure to have the funeral urns lined up for the order they would be cremated in. Lille Bobby wanted the blue waves for his lillipup; Abigail wanted the pink flowers for her purrloin; and Timothy wanted the shiny gold one for his purrloin. Little tiny Tim with the tiny dead roadkill.

"All right, cart 'em in for me," I say to the pokemon standing ready. The golett nods with so much vigor you could mistake it for enthusiasm. I narrow my eyes in my suit and point to each body so the thing can't mess it up. "Dog first, then neck-break," and I point to Abigail's purrloin, "then throat stitches," and I point to little tiny Tim's purrloin. Another pokemon fallen victim to Cheren's throat maneuvers. You'd think they'd outlaw such a thing, but hey, pokemon battling was VIOLENT, and things like that were to be EXPECTED. Bunch of blitzle shit. If the Plasmas had gotten their way, the League would have had to own up to the barbaric battling pits and actually be held accountable. Maybe even instated some rules and regulations to gym battles, but no. Not even legendary dragons could change people's minds.

For now, I open the adjacent door to a massive room that looks like a cross between a garage and a hospital room. This is the prep room for the large pokemon, like the onix, that trucks had to cart in. I treated them in here. I mash my fist to a red button, and the inner garage door opens up to the furnace room. I walk up to where the rock snake pokemon is coiled neatly on a wide trailer hitch.

It's a pity, really. I hover closer to the strange and magnificent pokemon and run my hand against the lifeless stone. It's rough, a sign of a young onix compared to the smoother touch of an old, weathered snake. Supposedly wild ones live out in Victory Road and Twist Mountain. I've never seen one before, and it's a shame that my first one has to be dead. But, that's always how it works. I don't know why I expect different.

I pass my fingers over the back of its head. Bite marks. Kids always underestimate Cheren's work up and bite combination. Cheren is a whiz of battling, a man of sheer talent that nearly conquered the League on his first pass. Supposedly his record holds quite a few deaths, so it was no wonder he chose to break kids before they got far in their journeys. I bet it would be easier to shatter their hopes early instead of letting them get in over their heads.

A heavy sigh blasts from me. I step back, trying to see the full extent of this gargantuan pokemon. How much did mama and daddy pay to get an onix shipped out to make sure their kid beat the first gym? I shake my head and move back to crank the truck engine. It's a pity, that's what it is. The onix could have lived perfectly fine alone, but it got dragged into this League mess, tossed on some kid who clearly didn't know jack shit about battling, and now it's dead.

A crash rattles from the furnace room and I look up and swear under my breath. I stomp into the heated room, shouting, "Golem! What did I tell you?" The golett stops guiltily, the broken neck purrloin dangling by its tail from its fist. The lillipup had tumbled to the floor and both gurneys had somehow overturned. I point again at the insufferable golett saying, "Stop. Listen. What did I tell you?"

Golem ducks its head. It lifts the purrloin and then adds its other hand to its grip. "BOTH hands!" I shout at the dumb ghost. It flinches and nods. "Always, ALWAYS both hands, Golem! You have one job, all right? BOTH hands, my god . . ." I stomp back into the garage—waddle, more like, in this ridiculous heat suit—and I crank the truck engine harder, muttering, "Stupid, klutzy golett . . ." The last thing I need is people realizing that the pokemon my dad caught for me is Bambi on ice at all times and dumping their precious dead pokemon on the floor. Someone would sue for heresy or something.

The truck engine roars to life, and I climb in and drive the onix adjacent to the big furnace. I check the temperature. 1600 and climbing. By the time I finish with the little ones, we'll be ready to cremate the big one. I open the first chamber, and heat leaps out like a dog on a chain, snapping at my pillowed suit and leeching in through any exposed gaps. I take my shovel, slip it under the lillipup and shove the dog in like pizza in a brick oven. Pulling the shutter closed, I then open the second chamber.

Golem is still looking at his feet. Before I chuck the cats in too, I grin and poke one with the end of the shovel. "Hey, Golem. Must've been on his ninth life, yeah?" Golem looks up at me with so much offense shining in his eyes I almost snap at him again, but sharp laughter screeches above me. The magnemite running maintenance twirls its magnets at me. Thin streaks of electricity web out from the ends like streamers from a party popper. I nod and grin wider, and I point up at him. "See? Magnets appreciates my humor," and I shove the purrloin in the furnace.

Once all the little ones burned, I check the heat for the onix's tomb. We idle a few minutes while the furnace reaches peak levels of hot and then I let Golem wrangle the onix inside. As much as I dislike my dad, he at least had the right idea picking the ghost type out for me. The machoke that previously worked here died of old age. But a ghost? As long as Golem wasn't battling, it'd live forever.

As Golem shoves the Onix in the blazing furnace, the tail drops and completely unrolls. Golem tries to catch it, but the rest of the snake collapses awkwardly in and out of the chamber. Golem whines and shoves its hands up, both full of the rocky onix. I groan and rub my head. Thank god it wasn't a battler. It wouldn't last five seconds if it couldn't manage anything else in life.

Finally though, Golem hauls the pokemon inside, and I shut the furnace. This job is too damn hot. Sweat pours down my body and no amount of deodorant could help me. I'm a sticky wet mess, and not in a good way. I disrobe from the heat proximity suit and leave the furnace room back into chilling air conditioner.

I scrub the mortuary and fill out paperwork in the meantime. After three hours, I come back to the dog and cats, open the furnace again, and use a long, hoe-like rod to smash the calcified bones down. They burn down even more, and then I turn off the furnace. I check the onix, stir up the melting rock, and leave it to the extreme heat.

Now comes the fun part. I scrape first the lillipup's remains out of the furnace and into a metal box. I carry the box aside and sift through the remains for any metal pieces despite doubting that the lillipup had any metal in it. But hey, that's policy. The machine it goes into next doesn't like metal, and if for some reason a piece of metal gets in it and breaks it, I can't afford that.

There is no metal in the lillipup remains, like I expected. I collect the remains one more time, dump it all into a square machine. Dust clouds up and batters my dust mask. It doesn't smell like death, just dust. The extreme heat of cremation doesn't allow for decomposing parts.

I put a lid on the machine and turn it on. It whirs to life with an awful grinding noise, and I wonder how many people know that we put their loved pokemon bones into a blender. The bones have to be pulverized into fine dust to go into their little cremation pots. After the lillipup is nothing but dust, I pour the material into the blue urn for Bobby. Then I go back and blend the two purrloin and put them in their urns. Viola! Three perfectly cremated pokemon. Sometimes I like to horrify the teenage trainers with the gritty details. "Oh yeah, your Riolu's head was tough to crack in the fire, it had good, strong bones." They blanch as pale as the remains of their pokemon. Funny, really. Stupid and petty, but funny all the same.

I check the time. It's running near five o'clock now, and I've got places to be, but I have to wait on the onix to melt fully before I can put it in the cooler. The kids with the cats and dog could pick up the remains tomorrow, but the onix? It needed three days to cool in our little freezer. Sensible kids left 450 pounds of liquefied onix behind. Rich kids demanded liquidation, a fancy urn the size of a dresser, and a crane to put it in their front yard as garden art. Or something. I don't know what people do with a dresser-sized urn of onix, but it can't be sensible.

Instead, I stay late, pouring the liquefied onix into an urn with Golem's help, watching the molten rock fade from its golden glow within minutes. The heat-proof urn holds the high temperature rock, and I shut down the furnaces for the night. Golem and I rock the heavy urn up the loading slope and into the truck. I back the truck into the garage, and then we rock the urn into the cooler. I close up shop around seven, and return Golem. I'm grimy with sweat and the dust of pokemon clinging to my skin, and I'd like to scrape every inch of my body with a rock to get it off, but I walk seven blocks down the road to the hospital. I throw a wave at the desk lady, Karen. She knows me. She knows my routine. I think a lot of the staff does. It's hard to miss a girl that looks like a construction worker, especially in a pair of pants. Nice girls wear skirts, they say. Lucky for me, I am not a nice girl.

I take the elevator and walk down the long halls to room 3B. I knock and don't wait for an answer. Pushing open the door and walking in, I slouch down on the only chair in the room and gaze at the white-washed wall instead of at the patient in the gurney. I slip my suspenders off my shoulders and let them dangle by my baggy pants.

"So how's the patient today?" I say in my best nurse's voice. I can't keep it up long. Bitter sarcasm colors my words. "Did they feed you from a tube today? Do you still pee in the bed? I bet you do. You know how I know? Because I'm still working that dead-end job to pay for YOUR hospital bills, and my oh MY does that money funnel down the drain faster than I can make it."

There is no answer. I shift and groan in my seat. My back aches. Curse that onix. At least no one else had a faulty battle today and killed a pokemon. I only had to deal with Cheren's unfortunate victims.

I glance at the bed. Their skin seems pale and washed out. Too much like the color of ash. I look away and knead my neck. "So uh. Hugh come by and see you today?" I wait the appropriate amount of time for a reaction before plowing ahead. "He's going on a pokemon journey. Idiot. I've tried to talk him out of it, honestly, but he thinks he can find his sister's purrloin. Mittens, the one with the little white paws, remember? I say purrloin are a dime a dozen, but I can't argue with presents from dead dads. If his sister's fixated on it cause dead daddy dearest gave it to her, who am I to judge?"

The machines beep a slow, mechanical heartbeat and it echoes in the cold room. I glance at the foot of the bed, seeing feet propped up under the covers. "You cold? Need more blankets? You usually have three, not two."

The air feels heavy. I despise this place. I work in a place where death has already had its way. It's cold and empty and cruel with the furnaces for company, but at least I don't FEEL it. Death. It weighs over this damn hospital like a dark shroud, and it seeps into this room in particular, leeching off the life in the bed, like slurping the last little bits of soda from the bottom of a cup.

I roll my eyes and pick at my nails when there's no answer. "Whatever," I mutter. "How about I tell you a story instead? You know this one. You'll be thrilled to hear it again. It's the story of how a girl's best friend in the whole world had to get star struck about pokemon battles, just like the girl's dad. Dad leaves to be a hot-shot trainer, but no, you, you decide to stay and become a referee. Then, bam! One day, a high powered pokemon's rock slide goes awry, the referee is caught in the cross hairs, and now you've been in a coma for two years! Story end."

I glare at her now. Pale and waxy and unmoving. She might as well already be dead. "Two years. I gave up everything to take care of you. Scholarships. Grad school. Life as I knew it, all the plans I'd laid, I put them all to rest because you had the chance to wake up. Because I LOVED you. I've paid for your fucking life support, dealt with a shit job, lived in a shit tin can apartment, seven day shifts, I stopped everything for you. And what do I get?" I wait for her to fill the answer. "That's right," I hiss. "Nothing."

She can't answer, of course. She probably won't ever answer again. Really, I don't know why I waste my time anymore other than it being a relentless habitual cycle. I stand and pull my suspenders over my shoulders again. I hover for a long moment, and I don't know why. I don't expect anything after all this time. I DON'T expect anything. But I still stand there until the pressure in my chest builds so much that I can hardly breathe before I wave an uncaring hand at her.

"Try not to kick it overnight, Mom."

My family is a family that loves pokemon battles. My mother adored it, my father left his own daughter on a journey to be the best, and my uncle is one of the best.

Me?

I'm just a gal trying to make ends meet and watching all the threads of my life fray away.


	2. Chapter 2

**"There's a recking a coming**

 **It burns beyond the grave**

 **There's lead inside my belly**

 **Cause my soul has lost its way**

 **Oh Lazarus, how did your debts get paid?**

 **Oh Lazarus, were you so afraid?"**

 _ **Blood on my Name _ The Brothers Bright**_

* * *

I wake in a cold sweat.

Chills race down my skin and I kick off my covers, gasping for air and way too damn hot in my own apartment. My blood prickles with thousands of needles and I stumble across creaking wood to the bathroom. Golem stirs with a low whine in my room. The darkness presses around me. I flick the light on, vaguely aware I've had a nightmare and focus on controlling my sprinting heartbeat. I turn the faucet lever and cold water runs out, brackish if you look too closely at it. I splash my face, rub the back of my neck and lean my palms against the porcelain edge of the sink.

I stay quiet even though Golem worries his mechanical heart out, standing just outside the door like a good pokemon. I trained him not to come into my bathroom. The bathroom is my spot only. I glance over at him with a tired smirk. Already, the nightmare is fading. "Quit that," I tell him. "You're worse than my mother."

He gives a low whir of discontentment and walks back into my room. He comes back with my day clothes, dropping the suspenders as he comes. He proffers them to me, and I glance at the clock. Seven thirty. I might as well stay awake at this point, but I refuse to put on clothes yet. "Thanks, but not yet," I say to him. I brush by him and into the kitchen. I make two eggs, a piece of toast, and four cups of coffee for breakfast, saying, "Hey, Golem? Had the weirdest nightmare. I don't really remember it now, but it was something about dragons. And space. Space dragons and lots of fire. Really hot. I blame the furnaces."

Golem nodded with attentive attention, laying my clothes out over one of the dining room chairs. He dropped the suspenders again and one of my socks, which he made two return trips for. After I make my breakfast, I sit my naked ass down on the other chair, eat my food and drink my coffee. God, sweet, sweet coffee. I am a machine that can't function without her coffee. The seat across from me remains unused. Golem doesn't sit. He's weird like that.

I'm cleaning the dishes when a knock sounds at my door. Scowling, I walk to the door—it has no peephole—and shout, "Who is it!" I don't get visitors.

"It's Hugh!"

Correction: I get one visitor. I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose. "Shit. You're leaving today, aren't you?"

"Yup. Can I come in?"

"One second!"

So I put on my clothes and let Hugh inside. I sit back down at my tiny kitchen table and Hugh pats Golem's shoulder suspenders, the only solid part of him when he chooses. "Hey Golem. Not letting this one push you around too much, right?" Golem whirs and lifts a hand, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. Hugh grins and sits across from me in a pair of loose trousers, a button up with the sleeves rolled up, and a sweater vest on. I cock a brow.

"It's too warm for sweater vests."

"Maybe, but I'll appreciate it when I'm camping at night." I couldn't refute him there. I think it bothered me so much because he always looked so good. Sweet, smooth chocolate skin and the biggest smile that shined with pearly whites. Surprising he's never found himself a girl. Then again, Hugh will go places in life, and I doubt he'd find a girl worth his time in Aspertia City. I always find it amazing that he goes out with his hair fully natural and picked out as big as it could get. I could never. I'd get too many stares. I get too many stares as it is with my short dreads done up Rosie the Riveter style, all wrapped up in a head scarf.

Hugh shakes his head with a smile. "Come now, Josey, can't even act a LITTLE bit excited for me?"

I kick back in my chair and cross my arms. I scowl, just to let him know even more. "No. You know how I feel. If you go off on this adventure thing of yours and get a pokemon killed at Cheren's gym, I'M the one that's gotta clean it up. Got it? If you go off on this fool's errand, you have to promise me not to muck it up with Cheren."

He lifts his hands in submission. "I get it, Josey." He pulls out a pokeball. It's not made of an apricorn, it's a shiny red and white technological thing from Silph Co. "I got my starter though. You wanna see him? He's cute."

Hugh doesn't wait for me to answer, and I wish he had. The pokemon forms before I can tell him that I DON'T want to see it, because the underlying fear that I'll have to burn the thing gets into my head and eats away at my thoughts. He's picked an oshawott, a little blue otter with a seashell on it's chest. It IS cute. I hate that. I haven't had to burn an honest to god starter pokemon in a while. Kids always try to protect their starters the most, whether the classic, endangered starters provided by Professor Juniper or not. It's the kids who wipe against Cheren that lose their starters.

The oshawott is far more enticed by Golem than me, and I'm thankful when it squeaks and dashes around Golem's legs. Golem warbles with excitement, bending over and _cher-chunk_ -ing like a pair of gears winding too fast. They like each other, and my heart squeezes with unease. If Hugh loses that adorable abomination, I'm not letting Golem anywhere near its dead body.

"Name's Poseidon," Hugh said. He rubbed the back of his neck, saying, "I let Molly name him. She thought it'd be funny to name him Posey since he posed when she first saw him, but I managed to talk her up to Poseidon for the sake of his pride."

I immediately thought of the urn with the merman with a trident. Shit, my brain can't let me enjoy anything in life. "He'll grow into it," I finally say, thinking about samurott and hoping Hugh would get that far. I don't like how Posey rhymes with Josey, but I don't tell Hugh that. Molly likes me. It was probably a subconscious decision on her part. Or unhappy circumstance.

"Yeah," Hugh said with a grin. He leaned down, scratching the otter's chin. It purred a high-pitched trill. "I get a feeling we'll go far. Molly wants me to catch her a minccino. I'm gonna tear apart this region to find one for her. First time she's wanted a pokemon since Mittens."

My stomach turns. A lot of Plasma-stolen pokemon don't turn back up by virtue of probably dying in the conflict. I doubt after two years that Hugh would ever find Mittens, but I'm not about to say it. He gets touchy about it. Sometimes I wonder if he's more attached to the cat than Molly is.

Hugh shifts. I sit up straighter, sensing his change of pace. "I uh . . ." He fiddles with his fingers. He looks up at me with hesitant brown eyes. "I'll probably go pretty far on this journey. I've studied a lot, and you know I worked out at Alder's summer school for the past year. I got a few good tips on battling, so I think I've got good chances. If uh . . . Well, if I get out to Lacunosa Town, I could—"

My blood chills and my jaw sets. "Hugh. Don't."

"Josey, I'm just saying, you ain't never listened to what the woman had to say—"

"I heard enough."

"I could at least find out what happened for you—"

"Hugh!" He's tense too. I see it in his clenching jaw and hands. I glare at him, trying to incinerate him on the spot. "I know what happened. The boogieman got him, all right?" When Hugh didn't look convinced, and scoff and roll my eyes. I lean back and cross my arms, muttering, "Dad got cocky and went into the Giant Chasm and never came back out. That's how it works, Hugh. Supernatural monster or not, the statistics prove it. No one comes out of the Giant Chasm alive. Dad's no exception. It's almost been five years. I'm over it."

Hugh stares at me for a long moment. I know he doesn't really believe me, but that's because he and Molly have daddy issues. Their dad was a pokemon ranger. I know their dad went out looking for a lost trainer and lost his life bringing them back. Wild banette curse got him, but he saved some teenager in the end. Got a hero's funeral. And I know that's why Hugh can't let it go. It's why I want him to let it go. Cause if he goes looking for my lost dead dad, he'll just end up like his own dead dad. But can I get through his hard head? Of course not.

Finally, Hugh rubs his face and relents. He slouches down. "You don't even want me to make a pass out there to find out what that woman had to say? She seemed to have some sorta story about it all."

"I don't care." I shrug one shoulder. "At the end of the day, he's dead, and it doesn't matter how he went." I know how he went. A cocky bastard who left his wife and daughter for glory on the road of a pokemon trainer. And he died being a cocky bastard who thought he could cheat death in the Giant Chasm.

Poseidon purrs and trills at my feet, rubbing its head on my steel-toed boot and gnawing on it. I half think about kicking it since it's so tiny and it would go far, but even though I have the weird thought, I don't. I'm not a horrible person. Most of the time.

"Well," Hugh ventures, "how's everything with your ma? Need any help with—"

"I don't need help, Hugh," I cut him off before he can offer to give me any money. I'm not a sad charity case with a dead dad and half-dead mom. I don't want his, or anyone else's pity. He stops in uncomfortable silence, and I grind my jaw. I look down on his oshawott. God it's so cute. I really hope it doesn't die.

After a few moments, I finally venture a dark thought that's been on my mind. "I . . . I've been thinking about letting her go."

Hugh looks up quick. "Josey, no," he said, a warning in his voice. "She's your ma. You can't."

"But I could." The words sound so cold. Maybe they are. But . . . I don't care. I just can't care anymore, and I let him know. "She's been in a coma two years, Hugh. That's not normal. I've talked with the doctors. Comas aren't supposed to last more than a couple weeks. The swelling in her brain went down. She's recovered from the trauma. They reclassified her condition, you know? It's not a coma anymore. They call it," and I throw up air quotes, "a 'persistent vegetative state.' She's nothing but a vegetable anymore, Hugh. They said it themselves. If people are in a state like that for more than a few months, they usually don't wake up."

Hugh is silent. He doesn't offer anything to support me or contradict me, and I know it's because he holds on. He holds on so hard he still can't let go of dead daddy, and I know if his mother was ever in this condition, he would always keep her on the life support. He'd never give up on his mother. He's . . . stronger than me.

I glance at my bookshelf. It's chock full of history books and archeology texts from my college days, and there's a scrapbook of magazine articles on the latest finds and scientific breakthroughs regarding Relic Castle, the passages beneath it, and the Abyssal Ruins. My diploma sits on top. It's slipped flat, and I've never propped it back up. It's covered in dust.

I'm selfish. I fight it, but maybe one day I'll own it. For now, I mutter, "I don't know. It was just a thought."

Hugh holds his silence a moment longer. Eventually, he just asks, "Is there anything I can do, Josey?"

There's not. And I don't want him to. He's got a few personal tips from the former Champion. He's intelligent, got just enough money to make his life work, and I know he's going to go places. Whether he takes the gym challenge far, or if he just makes it to a new city and finds his place. He's not going to be like me, stuck forever in a dead-end job and struggling to pay the bills. He'll have a life. I'll merely exist.

Instead, I just give him a wry, tired grin, saying, "Not much, but if I die one day, promise me you'll cremate me. It's my last chance to get a smoking hot body."

Hugh groans. "By god Josey, can you stop with your shit sense of humor?"

I laugh then, seeing his reaction, and say, "Oh come on, Hugh, you know I'm funny!"

"Only to—"

The phone rings and cuts off his comeback, which is a good thing because I'm really bad at battling his wits. My smile falls though as I approach the obnoxious land line.

 _Please don't be the hospital, please don't be the hospital._

I pick up the phone. "Hello?"

"Josephine Ebele? Mortician of Fairhill Funeral Home?"

I shift on my heels. "I might be. Who are you and how'd you get this number?"

"This is the Virbank Gym. Your funeral director Mark Edwards said we could reach you at this number. There has been an accident at the gym, and we have requested your presence to help clean up."

I cock my brow. I glance back at Hugh before turning back to the wall, asking, "What happened to your own undertakers? You don't need me. You expect me to hop on a bus and spend three hours on a commute over there?"

"Mr. Edwards said he would be more than happy to send you over to assist with the clean up." I roll my eyes hard with disgust. Of course that fucking Edwards wanted to send me away. "Virbank's own morticians are currently understaffed and the League has requested the nearest pokemon mortician to come. That would be you."

Three hours. THREE HOURS of bus commute, three to and three back, and god knew paying for that bus fare was going to come straight out of my pocket because Edwards didn't give overtime or amenities. "Come on, you can't be serious," I hedge again. "Let someone else clean it up! What happened anyways?"

"I'm afraid that information cannot be disclosed, Ms. Ebele. We expect you at eleven sharp. Thank you for your cooperation."

"Hey, I never said, I'd—!" The dial tone rings in my ears. You had to be kidding me! I slam the phone down and check the clock. Just past eight. I was going to be late for their deadline because I'd have to catch the 8:30 bus and transfer to a different bus in Floccesy Town at 10 and hopefully make it there sometime after 11 or so.

"Shit." I yank my suspenders up and grab Golem's old apricorn ball and twist the top. "Return." It's not as fast as the zippy light of Silph's new pokeballs. The apricorn ball fades Golem and pulls him into the ball in about three seconds compared to the split second of Silph Co.'s shiny new balls. Hugh demonstrates this by returning Poseidon as I say, "I gotta run, Hugh. Gonna be late."

"Wait, what was that all about?" he asks while I dump the rest of my coffee in my portable mug. I snap the leaky cap on and wave a hand.

"Have no idea. Virbank Gym wants me out there to help clean up some mess of a battle. Corpses'll be cold by the time I get out there. The lady wouldn't tell me, so I guess it's bad."

I head out the door with my keys, and Hugh follows, shimmying out the door when I nearly shut it on his shoulders. "That bad, huh?" He grabs my shoulder when I make to move down the hall. "Hey! And where you making tracks to, hot mama? I didn't come all this way for you to skip out without a proper hug! You might not see me for months. I've got to get a proper goodbye. C'mere!"

Hugh smooshes me to his chest before I can react. My nose practically breaks it's so crushed to his sternum, but I roll my eyes and wrap my arms around him. Corny idiot. "You are straight off the cob, Hugh, you know that?"

He lets go and winks. "And I plan on keeping it that way, doll face. I'll be sending letters, so keep me up on the low down, all right, Josey? I known you for ten years now, just cause I'm going far away don't mean I'm letting you slip out of my life."

"Yeah, whatever," I say, but I'm grinning now despite the tight spot in my chest. God I'm going to miss him. I already feel that I'm going to feed on his letters like a ravenous dog. Without him? I ain't got no friends. "I gotta run, Hugh. Stay out of trouble. And keep your pokemon alive!"

I head down the hall, and he stays rooted, letting me go. He waves. "Sure thing, Josey! You stay out of trouble too, you hear?"

"I hear!" And with that, our goodbyes are kept short. Hugh steps out of my life, and I step even deeper into work.

The Virbank Gym is crawling with police when I get there. My stomach immediately drops.

I flash my I.D. and I'm allowed inside the gym, even with my shovel. But only into the lobby. I sit down with one other man wearing faded tweed slacks and a black button up, his sleeves rolled up for cleaning up the mess ahead. A throh sits on the ground next to him. He glances askew at me like he can't figure out whether to approach me like I'm a woman or a man.

"You're the Aspertia undertaker?"

I kick back and cross an ankle over my opposite knee. I take up more room than he does. "You're looking at her."

He looks me up and down again. I consider punching him. "They're warming up the big furnace back at our funeral home. Two blocks down," and he points, like I can see through the walls of this building. "Do you know what's going on here?"

I snort and slouch, annoyed that I have to wait and wait with an idiot like him. "Do it LOOK like I know what's going on?"

He mutters something snide about me, and I ignore him. The police mill about, doing police things. I don't see the gym leader. Someone in a black suit slips out of the main gym area and is on his phone even before he exists the gym.

This is . . . bad. Gym leader go rogue and slaughter some shit? Or the challenger? No, that can't be right. I was called before gyms open.

"All right you two." I look up when a squat officer approaches with a two clipboards. He hands them to us. "I need you two to read this and sign on the line before going inside. If you can't, we'll find someone else."

I give him the nastiest look of doubt that I can before I begin reading the very long disclaimer. A . . . My brows raise. A non-disclosure agreement? I read the papers. Don't speak of this, don't do that, dispose of all of the pokemon in the same furnace, hand over the ashes to the government . . . They're making it like nothing ever happened here.

 _Oh shit. This is the, sign here or you might mysteriously disappear agreement._

"What the hell happened here?"

The officer crosses his arms at me, and I remember what I'm holding the second I ask. "No questions."

I glance up at him. "Do I at least get overtime?"

No answer. I sigh. Whatever. I'm here now and clearly there's no way for me to weasel out of it. I sign a scribble for my name that vaguely looks like spinda markings and hand it back. The man's eyes comb slowly through the agreement. He sits hesitating for far longer than me. He probably has more sense. Or a better grasp of self-preservation.

But, he signs it too and the officer gestures. "Bring the truck around back." He points to me. "Load it all up. No questions. No comments. Quicker you get it done, quicker you get home. The sanitation crews will come after you, so don't worry about the blood. Just get all the bodies and get out."

My pulse picks up in my neck. I feel it hammering as I release Golem and tug on my work gloves. Both he and the throh follow me into main area.

I'm suddenly glad I didn't pack a lunch.

The stench of death and burned flesh hits my nose. Virbank City is a fire type gym. It's one of the reasons I refused to come out and work here despite a thirty cent pay raise. The hideous smell of burning flesh wasn't one I wanted in my nose all day.

But this?

No. This was far beyond any normal gym battle. This was a brawl. This was a slaughter.

There are more dead bodies than I've ever seen before. magby, koffing, pansear and slugma. It's like every single gym trainer and the leader was in on this battle. I see the gym leader's ace, a magmar with it's stomach slit open and organs sliding out. A shiver runs up my spine. It's not just gym pokemon in here. There are liepard, watchog, krokorok, and scrafty. The latter two pokemon don't belong on this part of the gym route. The League set a route that winds from Aspertia up to Opelucid City, gyms from one to eight. Something otherwise happened here.

Blood spatters up the walls. It oozes from the pokemon in pools. Several pokemon have been dismembered. The throh next to me shakes. Golem whines. I swallow, tell myself, _It could be worse,_ and watch the truck back right in front of the rear door to the arena.

"Let's get to it you two." My voice is raspy. I jerk my shoulder and head into the room. "Could be worse." I tell myself that, but I think of Hugh next, fresh on his journey this morning. The Virbank gym was in limbo. Until they fixed this mess, his gym circuit could be put on hold. I'm relieved I signed the confidentiality agreement. I don't want to talk about this to anyone. I don't want to know what happened. I just want it gone.

I don't see any human bodies, but there are smeared pools of blood suspiciously lacking bodies.

We begin shoveling. Golem and the throh get the heavier pokemon, like the krokorok, liepards, scraftys, and the magmar. I shovel the lighter pokemon and begin with the koffing so the chances of our pokemon getting poisoned stayed to a minimum. The first one I pick up is shredded and deflated like a balloon, and it oozed some sort of black fluid. One. Two. Three. I shovel the baby magby pokemon. One is missing its hand. I don't find it. Four. Five. They hit the metal floor of the truck with low bangs. The guy that's supposed to be helping me drops his shovel. A pansear hits the floor, and its head rolls away. He throws up. I go over and pick up the head, put it back on his shovel, and take it to the truck. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. I scrape the slugma off the floor. Its eyes have sank to either side of its shapeless body. Ten. My shovel is covered in blood. The ever-present ache in my back is stabbing again. I force the shovel under a watchog that is mauled with its arms and legs twisted and ripped in different directions. Eleven. I count how many pokemon Golem and the throh have brought in. Eight.

Nineteen. The death toll in here is nineteen. Not counting what bodies they moved. More than nineteen. But I only have nineteen bodies.

The guy is sick. He's leaning against the wall, trembling with his face in his shirt. He's trying not to look at it. He's trying not to smell it. I look back at the officer who seems satisfied that we found all the little dismembered body parts like fingers and arms, and he tells us, "There's an officer waiting for you at the funeral home. Burn them all. Collect the ashes and we'll take it from there. Then you'll be free to go home."

I nod. I can't feel anything but the throbbing pain in my spine and the rush of blood in my ears, pulse of blood in my hands. I return Golem and haul the guy by the elbow to the truck. I put him in the passenger seat. His throh follows. I shut the back doors on the carnage, step into the driver's seat and drive us to the funeral home. We pull up to the rear of the building where the officer waits and help guide me when I back in. The guy has to go to the bathroom to throw up again. His throh looks an ugly shade of purple. When I release Golem, he looks drained, like all his energy has been used up. I pat his shoulder and refuse to crack like the other guy.

We shovel and haul every body into the big furnace. I shut the door and let them burn. My body is crying out for rest, so I sit and stretch for a while, sweating and stomach churning. I don't each lunch.

When it's been five hours and I'm sure there's nothing left but calcified bones, I put the fire proximity suit on again and take a long metal rod. I beat against all the bones until my arms are numb and I can't lift the rod. I can't let the throh and Golem near this kind of heat without protection. I close the door, sit, and rest. Golem comes close and massages my muscles. When the numbness has worn off and the pain kicks in, I shoo Golem away and open the doors again. I crack the rest of the bones into small pieces. My arms, shoulders, and back are numb with exhaustion. I close the doors and let the furnace cool. I don't eat dinner.

The man helps me collect the ash and bones. We don't speak. We grind the bones in silence while the bone blenders scream and whir. The throh and Golem tote the portions of bones to us, and they tote the finely ground remains away. I see them loading a police van with the boxes. I'm covered in bone dust and sweat and completely numb to it all now. I don't care. They can take their grisly deeds and hide it all away. I don't care. I don't want to deal with it anymore.

The sun set a long time ago. By the time we're finished, it's past ten at night. The police leave. I leave. I let the Virbank undertaker clean up his facility by himself. I return Golem and trudge to the bus stop. I catch z's on the way home. I don't visit my mother tonight.

I unlock the door to my apartment at half past one in the morning. I want to collapse in bed, but I shower first. I scrub my body until even my brown skin glows red like hot metal and cycle through my bed routine. It's past two in the morning. I have to be up in a little over five hours.

It's not until I lay down and am alone with my thoughts that it all crashes down. I lay and shake and sweat in my bed, fighting the urge to hurl whatever is left in me.

I don't want to know what happened. I'm glad they took it all away because I don't want to remember it.

I . . .

 _I've never seen anything like it._

I catch at most two hours of sleep, off and on all night. Golem wakes me up for the next day. I sit with my coffee, and Golem whines, batting at the fridge. He wants me to eat. He wants me to eat so badly he breaks our rule and reaches into the fridge and gets the eggs to make me breakfast. He cracks five eggs and gets shells in the egg with each break. He drops two. On my last egg, he chooses to pick out the shells as best he can and turns on the stove top. He makes me burned eggs. I pick at them. I drink my coffee.

I put my clothes back on and go back to work.


	3. Chapter 3

**"I am a stone, unaffected**

 **Rain hell down onto me**

 **Flesh and bone, unaffected**

 **Your fool I will not be"**

 _ **I Am a Stone _ Demon Hunter**_

* * *

It takes the League three days to replace the old Virbank gym leader.

Roxie comes out of nowhere, an underground battling star with an electric band. Younger, fresher, and prettier than the previous leader. She's a smash hit. People are so enamored they don't ask about ol' Harvey's sudden disappearance and the flimsy story of retirement. Kids on their gym circuit scramble to rethink their strategy for the Virbank gym. Roxie uses poison types, and her Whirlipede is a crusher.

Hugh sends me a letter in two days, asking if everything is all right and what happened. I lie to him.

Still, it's refreshing to hear of Hugh's endeavors. Even with the constant suck of work on my life, my head finally turns to the sky instead of the sidewalk when I walk to and from work, hospital and home. I hope for a travel pidove everyday. If there's one thing sweaty, sticky, humid hoenn had going for it, it was the idea of travel taillows spreading to other regions. It let me cling to Hugh for just a bit longer before he really faded out of my life.

I try to forget what happened. I usually can until I go to bed and am left alone with my thoughts. My body still aches from that day, and because I don't call in sick or take a day off, my body never fully recovers from the abuse I put it through.

And my days fall back into their regular routine. I head to Cheren's gym, watch him maul the pokemon of kids and adults alike, collect their pokemon, and cremate them. I log my hours, punch out, walk to the hospital. I make small talk with my mom. She doesn't answer. Some days are better than others. The day after the Virbank catastrophe, I can't say anything. I just hold her hand and try to force her body to stay warm.

The hospital bills pile up. Luckily, I DO get a bonus check to keep my ass silent about the Virbank gym. It's a week's worth of wages. I take a dollar to buy soap, canned pork beans, flour, lard, and eggs to replace the ones Golem broke. The rest funnels right into the hospital bills and doesn't even make a dent. I accepted a long time ago that I'd never pay off my mother's hospital bills, but still. I do all the calculations on what I owe, and with my minimum wage? I'll spend the next 200 years paying off the bills. All I can do is laugh and give some snide remarks to Golem who just whirs and hums with worry. He doesn't like my negativity, but I can't control it. Not anymore.

Against my better judgment, I look at tuition for Nimbasa University. I can't afford it. I look at jobs out there. There's a job opportunity at Elesa's gym. I want to put in an application. I want to transfer. I stare the temptation in the face, think of my mother and my lack of money, and I don't apply.

The second letter from Hugh comes about a week into his journey. It contains a sketch of his new pidove and sewaddle, Ace and Silky. Bastard. He's too multi-talented. The bird seems extra poofy, and I wonder if it has the big pecks ability to compensate for that fluff. The travel dove has a new letter attached that's addressed to Hugh, from his family. I find a scrap of paper and write him a brief congratulatory note and send the bird out. It heads east. He must be in Floccesy Town by now. I head west to work.

Golem drops more dead bodies at work. I drink more coffee than is healthy. Cheren continues to defeat his challengers without mercy, and the rather steady influx of dumb trainers with their patrats and purrloins at least keeps a check on their population size. Hugh takes his time around Floccesy Town, and while it annoys me that he takes so long, I'm also grateful. He's not heading into his battle with Cheren recklessly.

Nearly another full week passes before we get another travel dove. It contains a single sketch of a cute, bipedal dog with the name "Romulus" written beneath it, and Hugh's few words: "Caught us a secret weapon. I'm headed home. I'll see you all soon! Love, Hugh."

My heart lifts a little. A riolu. They're rare species classified as vulnerable. Not quite endangered. It's still legal to catch them, though I hear it's regulated. It's been . . . six months? since someone brought a riolu into Cheren's gym. They were a fool that took Cheren too lightly and let their riolu die, but it was the only casualty they had. A riolu could do almost all the heavy lifting for Hugh, especially if he managed to have it learn Force Palm.

Hugh is home late the next day. His mother and Molly cooked a welcome home dinner for him. I'm held up at the mortuary since a couple kids got in a scrap late in the day and I had to cremate their pokemon, but I still swing by. Golem likes Hugh's pokemon, and they all play out back. They had homemade lasagna. I wolf down three plates because I'm starving on soup beans, dry biscuits and eggs. I haven't had a homemade meal in years. His mother packs me a lunch for tomorrow, and I take one of their apples for breakfast. I slog through one more day while Hugh gets registered for his battle, and then . . . I'm standing where I always do, at the corner door of Cheren's gym. The stands are always full because people are horrible creatures who like to watch pokemon death matches. Hugh is standing with a near practiced ease in the challenger spot, but I can see the taunt line of his jaw from here. He's nervous. I don't blame him. My stomach is churning from the sidelines, and I'm praying so hard to whatever deities are out there that he can do this.

He catches my eye. He flashes me a confident smile and tips his hat to me. I give him a thumbs up and find a thin smile in return. Golem waves and gives an excited shriek of support. My heart pangs with worry.

 _Please, PLEASE don't let him lose a pokemon. PLEASE don't let him lose anyone._

Hugh taps the circle on the Silph Co. pokeball, and he tosses it away from himself, saying, "Go! Poseidon!" The ball pops open with the vocal command, releases his starter in a zip of light and ricochets back to him. That's one thing I'll never get tired of. Watching the damn near supernatural way those Silph Co. pokeballs work. I bet they cost a fortune.

Cheren doesn't even blink and says, "I'll lead with Redeye," his patrat, like he always does. My stomach cramps. I chew what's left of my short nails and wonder why in gods name Hugh is leading with his starter. Classically, the starter is used as the anchor of the team, like in a relay race. You finish strong. I expected Hugh to use the Riolu first and tear through as many as possible before switching to the pidove, then his starter. The sewaddle? Too fragile yet to survive two hits from Cheren, and worthless yet.

A hand pats my hip. I look down and see Golem petting my hip like I would his head, and he whirs brightly, eyes winking with reassurance. I scowl and grumble and turn my attention to the battle.

The referee lifts his flags, red for the leader and yellow for the challenger, and calls out, "This battle will be a three on three! The challenger may switch out any of his pokemon during the match! The leader may not!" I roll my eyes, parroting the words under my breath with the ref, "When all pokemon on either side is unable to battle, the match will end! The challenger may reserve the right to forfeit at any time! Ready? Set? Battle, begin!"

He drops his flags. "Work Up!" Cheren calls immediately, and I'm amazed and horrified when Hugh says, "Poseidon, Focus Energy!"

He's LETTING Cheren set up his Work Up combination? Is he mad? The patrat snarls across the field and glows bright, threatening red while Hugh's oshawott holds its fist in its hand. It's glowing slightly too, white, but centered inward instead of outward.

"Bite!"

"Water Gun!"

The rat hurtles forward to its prey, and Poseidon leaps backwards for space and opens it mouth, spraying a jet of water at its foe. The first one hits directly in the rat's face, and it tumbles backwards in the dirt before flipping to its feet. It darts in close, dodging the next wide attacks, slips in close and sinks its teeth into Poseidon's arm. The otter yowls at a pitch I despise and I flinch.

"Tackle!"

Poseidon lunges, slamming the attached patrat with all its might. The rat squeaks and lets go. "Get some room, Poseidon!" Hugh calls as Cheren snaps, "Bite again!"

They dart across the field, Poseidon zipping back and forth and trying to shake the disciplined rat. Redeye is too fast—they can't lose him. Hugh's brows cinch and he shouts, "Stop! Tackle!"

Poseidon lifts from all fours, planting its bottom feet and stopping short, and turns its momentum back at Redeye. I cringe when they collide again, the patrat's teeth sinking in closer, into Poseidon's shoulder and the oshawott releases a shriek. Poseidon rams the tiny rat into the ground again, the back of its head hitting the sleek gym floor. There's blood now. I see it, spattered against the shiny ground and my knuckles tighten around my shovel.

 _Here it is._

"Tackle!"

Poseidon heaves up again. I stare in morbid fascination when the patrat keeps its teeth latched in the oshawott's shoulder, and Poseidon rams the patrat's head into the ground again, like a particularly murderous football player. The rat goes slack, and Poseidon pulls Redeye's teeth from its shoulder.

Shit. SHIT. My stomach pitches uncomfortably. I hadn't thought about HUGH killing a pokemon. There's a new spatter of blood on the ground, from Poseidon's shoulder and the patrat. The referee calls the round in Hugh's favor, and I walk out with my shovel. I kneel down to check the patrat's pulse.

It's bleeding from the head, but I feel it, that tiny kick of life. I look up at Cheren. "Alive."

He nods and returns his pokemon to its ball and hands it off to a gym worker. They disappear into the back to hand it to the working nurse, and I take my place back at the wall. Hugh is kneeling, spraying Poseidon with a potion. The otter squirms and mewls in complaint, but the medicine does its job, chilling the skin and making the bite holes contract smaller, numbing the pain. The translucent film covers Poseidon's wounds and keeps it from bleeding.

Hugh catches my eye. He nods and finds another smile for me. Funny that. Him supporting me when I'm supposed to be supporting him. I try to return it. My face feels pinched.

"Chinook!" Cheren's pidove takes the field next. I swallow and take a deep breath, trying to settle my nerves for the next bout. That's how pokemon battles are: short and violent. Only when pokemon are older and more trained do the battles extend more. It's amazing that even tiny critters like this can be so damn vicious already. My back of my neck is tight and my throat feels swollen shut. I didn't realize that knowing the person and their pokemon changes the game. I'm invested in Hugh and his pokemon. I can't just numb myself to this battle like I do the others.

I feel sick when Hugh sends Poseidon out again. He's practically playing with the otter's life now. He should switch to his own pidove. Let Poseidon rest. But he doesn't, and the referee drops his flags for the next round.

"Work Up!"

"Water Gun!"

Poseidon straight up blasts the bird from the sky. My eyes pop at the critical hit that sends the bird careening backwards and tumbling to the ground. It hits the floor with a smack, and I jump at the noise of bone on unforgiving ground. Cheren's head snaps around to his bird, and it dawns on me why Hugh didn't switch out: Focus Energy. It came into play and bit Cheren in the ass. That's why Hugh wanted to keep his distance with the patrat and switched to tackling when he couldn't. An incredulous and relieved laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I barely swallow the noise. My boy came with a plan. And a good one. A hellish gamble that I hated, but weren't all battles a gamble with life and death?

Cheren takes the moment to use his potion. Now they've both used their one sanctioned healing potion. Chinook flies back out.

"Water Gun!" Hugh calls, and Cheren bites out, "Quick Attack!"

The bird zips in like a miniature fighter jet, a mere blur to the eyes. My eyes are used to the speed, trained to see it after so many years watching the gym, and I see where the bird's beak jabs into Poseidon's bad shoulder, rips a fine spray of blood out of the oshawott. Poseidon shrieks and whirls at the force of the hit, and it hunches over its wounds. My heart strings play an anxious song. Cheren preys on weak spots. Hugh needed to return him before I had to scrape that little otter's body off the floor.

"Quick Attack!"

"Now, Poseidon!"

The bird dive-bombs the bleeding otter again. My heart hits my throat when Poseidon unleashes a jet of water in the charging bird's face, another fatal hit that shoots the bird out of the sky and on the ground. Its body thumps on the ground again, and I know my face is white with stress. The bird is lucky. It hasn't broken any bones. It begins to get up, and I look at Cheren to see if he'll forfeit this round to Hugh or keep going. His face is flushed, and I see the tension straining in his neck.

"Charge it, Poseidon!"

My head whips to Hugh. His brown eyes are hard as flint and narrowed to complete focus on the battle. He doesn't see me, only the two pokemon on the battlefield, jaw taunt as a rope and a pulse in his brow. Poseidon closes the distance on four legs even with a limp, and the pidove is getting up. Cheren isn't backing down. Bile fills in my throat.

This is how pokemon die.

"Tackle!" Hugh shouts. Chinook is chirping, struggling to get wind under its wings but its wings are too damp. Poseidon snarls and charges.

"Chinook! Return!"

Hugh starts. "Poseidon, stop!"

The otter skids on the ground. Chinook zips back into its pokeball, and I release a gasp of relief. It has been. So long. Since Cheren ever forfeited a round. I thought his pride would get the better of him, but he announces, "I forfeit this round to the challenger."

The crowd is screaming in excitement and outrage. Their beloved gym leader is losing. And losing pretty badly. It's been a long time since Cheren has lost a battle, much less without knocking out an opponent's pokemon. I stare at Hugh again, who's crouched and scratching his oshawott's cheeks with both hands, a big grin on his face. I can't hear his cooing above the din of the crowd, but he's glowing with pride. Clearly, whatever his plan is hinged on Poseidon taking the brunt of these first two pokemon. The otter looks happy, but it's weaving. It isn't counted as defeated, but Hugh can't send it out again. One bite from Cheren's lillipup and it would bite it for sure.

Hugh looks up to me again. There are crinkles by his eyes he's smiling so much. He gives me a big thumbs up. I return it, but my smile is even more pinched than before. It feels like a grimace. Clearly he thinks he's got the battle in the bag, but I'm afraid. The first two pokemon are practically warm ups. It's Cheren's lillipup that sends so many to the morgue.

Cheren's jaw works, like he's considering saying something. He doesn't.

"Brutus!"

And there it is. The tiniest, angriest little dog in the world that's not afraid to go for the throat. Hugh returns Poseidon. "My next is Silky!" and he—

He.

Throws out his sewaddle.

He's mad. I'm sure of it. A sewaddle was cute, but it's a bug. It's fragile. It won't last in a battle like this. But Hugh is sitting back on his heels like he's already got the battle in the bag, a big infuriating grin on his face. Cheren doesn't like it. I see his fist clench.

The flags drop for the next round. "Work Up!" Cheren spits, and Brutus begins glowing that ugly red that I've associated with death.

"String Shot!"

Brutus lunges to avoid the spit of string, but it still lands on the dog's back and side, sticking like a weight on its back and restricting its movement. "Work Up!" Cheren calls again. I want to shake Hugh. He's LETTING Cheren set up those Work Ups and I know how quickly Cheren can tear through a team if you let him get too many. But Hugh's wasting his time worrying about speed. That bug will have a hard time ever out-speeding the dog, and it's not like the worm could even really do lasting damage.

"String Shot!"

Brutus is smothered in more webs. It catches around the dog's legs and feet, and the dog barks and spits like mad, angry that it's getting tangled up. "Bite!" Cheren shouts, and my heart drops from between my lungs.

"Bug Bite!"

The two pokemon charge and meet in the center. The dog snaps its jaws around the bug and there's a high-pitched keen of a dying pokemon. Golem whirs at the sound and covers his eyes. I'm cold; all the blood is draining from me, but the sewaddle bites back, and it slowly dawns on me what Hugh is doing—the oran berry on the dog's collar. It's a sustaining health item allowed, and most kids don't think about how to disarm him. Silky eats the berry while the dog shakes it like a toy, shredding its leaves, crunching into its body.

Hugh pulls out his apricorn ball again. "Silky! Return!" The bug disappears from the battlefield, and Hugh announces, "I yield this round to the gym leader," and the crowd hoots and hollers. They're confident Cheren has the upper hand again. He's set up two Work Ups, and the bug barely hurt his dog. He could easily go for a third Work Up when Hugh's next pokemon—

Oh.

A disbelieving smile hits my face. Oh my god, Hugh, you damned brilliant idiot.

There's energy in Hugh's movements now. He twists his next apricorn open, saying, "My last is Romulus!" and there shows up that blessed blue bipedal dog. A shadow flicks over Cheren's face. His dog is chewing on the silky strings sticking its feet to the floor, restricting its speed.

Hugh was going to hit first. And he was going to hit hard.

The referee drops his flags and calls for the battle to begin. Hugh grins. "Force Palm!"

"Tackle!"

The dog desperately tries to close the distance and I clap my hand over my mouth to resist a shout of glee. He managed to teach that little imp FORCE PALM! Romulus leaps the distance between them, paw lifted and shining, and it slaps down on the lillipup's face. A blast of light explodes and the lillipup yips and crashes to the ground. It whines pitifully, but Cheren grinds out from between his teeth, "Tackle!" and I realize Hugh has this in the bag completely. He's a fighting type—he's made Cheren's signature Bite not very effective for this battle. He's slowed down its terrible speed. He took away its health sustainment. Cheren's done for.

"Quick Attack!"

Hugh even pulls his last attack back from another Force Palm that spelled certain death for that gangly mutt. The riolu dashes across the field and knocks the pup flat on its back again before it can attempt to fight back. It whines and twitches on the ground. Cheren is mad red. There's another lull in the battle and the crowd has gone quiet in shock of how easily Hugh dispatched Cheren's star player.

Cheren pulls out his pokeball. "I forfeit this match to the challenger," he says, and he returns Brutus to its ball. All eyes set on the referee who drops the red flag and raises the yellow, proclaiming, "Match, end! Cheren's pokemon are unable to battle! The challenger, Hugh, is the winner!"

My heart explodes with relief and pride. "YES!" I shriek before I can stop myself. The crowd is echoing my shout and waving banners. Hugh dashes out onto the field, scooping Romulus up with loud laughter. Romulus is barking and Hugh puts the little dog up on his shoulder and gives a wave to the crowd. They scream harder. I'm pretty sure a few of the girls are swooning. I smile and shake my head. Fucking heart breaker, soak it up, why don't you?

Cheren approached him, and contrary to the complete anger I'd seen in his face earlier, Cheren squinted at Hugh, and his cheeks tightened like he held back a wry grin. He said something that made Hugh smile sheepishly and scratch his head. Huh. Embarrassment, Hugh? Cheren pulled a case from his pocket, opened it, and offered it to Hugh. Hugh beamed and picked it up.

Cheren turned to the stands and cast a hand to Hugh. The crowd obediently cheered louder for a new trainer on their way to properly take the League challenge. Someone darts from the stands. It's Molly. Hugh opens up his arms to the eleven year old and she tackles him as hard as she can. He picks her up and swings her around like she weighs nothing.

Golem punches my side. His core glows hot with excitement, exuding warmth, and he throws several playful boxing punches and cher-chunks madly. I roll my eyes at his enthusiasm and push him. "Yeah, yeah," I said and wave a lazy hand. "He did good, didn't he?"

I look back up at Hugh. He's looking at me. He grins. I know what he's up to, and I give him a warning glare. He ignores it and comes running to me, and my shoulders cave back. "Hugh," I warn him as he closes the distance, "Hugh, don't you dare—!"

Only true friends ignore each other like this. I _oomph!_ into his chest as he likewise crunches my ribcage and twirls me around like a doll. He sets me down and waggles his brows. "Well, Josey? Told you I had it in the bag. Went smooth as eggs in coffee, and I even kept my promise! Not a single down for the count!"

"No need to get the big head," I say, but I can't help but grin and roll my eyes. I shoo him away. "Look, my shift isn't over and you've got a hurt pokemon. You get Posey there to a Center and head out with your girls. Celebrate or some shit, you deserve it."

He laughs and says, "Okay, Josey. But I'll be seeing you later, alright? Second you're off, you make tracks to our place, right? I gotta share a beer with you or the party isn't complete, hear?"

"I hear you," I say, and I shove him off because Molly wants his attention and no doubt wants to see the badge. Hugh points at me again, making sure I know that I'm obligated to show up at his house before heading off with Molly and his mother. I wave to them all as they go, and it's only when they exit the gym that I slump against the wall.

My eyes lift to the battlefield. A gym worker is cleaning the blood from the floor for the next battle on the hour. I should be more elated than this, but . . . All I can think is . . .

 _That was too close._

It's after work. I'm out on time for once, and I check the time. I have time to visit my mother before I show up at Hugh's place. At least for a quick visit. So even though I'm filthy with the dust of dead pokemon and sweat from the fire, I head out to the hospital again. I wave at Karen who sits at the desk, walk to room 3B and sit down with my mother. It's so very quiet in the room.

I clear my throat and try to find my words. "So. Hugh had his gym battle today. He did good. Real good. Didn't lose a single pokemon, thank god. I wasn't prepared to . . . burn a friend's pokemon. My only friend's pokemon." I let the words sit. I can't really explain the sour, lead feeling in my stomach beyond that. I stretch my sore body and groan, slouching into the hospital seat.

"He did it with an oshawott, a riolu, and you won't believe it, but a sewaddle. Crazy bastard. I didn't think he had it in him."

Mom doesn't say anything, and it hurts. After all this time, I'm still angry she can't respond. In the wake of Hugh's grand win and his clear springboard into success, it rubs like sandpaper on flogged skin. I pick at my hangnails and glower at the floor.

Her body is there, but she feels farther away than ever. She doesn't know anything that's been going on in my life. She's not support in my life anymore, she's a drag. I hate taking care of her. I hate paying to keep her alive when she won't wake up. I hate visiting this depressing hospital. I hate my life. I hate everything about it, and it's so easy to hang all of my problems on my mother at this point.

I want to pretend she means nothing to me, because it would make things easier, but it's not the truth. The truth burns in my skin. It wells inside me, sucking on my throat, heaving through my lungs and stinging my eyes. I bow my head in my hands, shuddering against the tears.

It's not just a temptation to pull the plug on her.

I WANT to pull the plug. And I don't want to look back.


	4. Chapter 4

**"Wait, it's just about to break, it's more than I can take**

 **Everything's about to change**

 **I feel it in my veins, it's not going away**

 **Everything's about to change"**

 _ **War of Change _ Thousand Foot Krutch**_

* * *

Cheren is mad.

Depending on the severity of his losses, Cheren always comes back more unyielding and cruel as ever. I notice the uptick in dead bodies because I see him maul them and then I have to bake them all. Whenever his pride is hurt, he's like this. And all I can do is shovel the people's pokemon and glare at Cheren from across the room.

He catches me once. Storm clouds glower in his sunken eyes. A shiver goes up my spine, and I stop throwing daggers from a distance.

Hugh is officially off on his journey. First gym winners don't get on TV; that's usually reserved for someone who makes the 4th gym hump. (That's Elesa. Bitch model extraordinaire.) Still, Hugh does get a corner of the front page, and I buy a newspaper for the first time in months. Against my better judgment, I don't just snip Hugh's article from the newspaper, where in his interview he lets the people know he's on a journey to find his purrloin Mittens. I also flip deeper in the news section for anything interesting on the historical front. Nothing on Relic Castle, home of Reshiram and the older twin hero, and nothing about Abyssal Ruins, home of Zekrom and the younger twin hero. I turn to the classifieds. The Nimbasa Gym opening is still there.

I stand next to my trash can with the newspaper. I cut the job opening out and stick it to my fridge and throw away the rest of the paper.

Hugh also gives me a whole one hundred mother fucking dollars. I'm aware that gym battling is a lucrative business fueled by our tax dollars, but it didn't truly dawn on me how MUCH you could get by doing it. Hugh raked in a thousand dollars alone on Cheren. It's sickening. That's over a year's wages for me, and while I'm tempted sometimes to battle for money, I know better. Mama didn't raise no fool. (Though, how big of a fool am I for keeping her on life support?) And the gig only gets more profitable as it goes on. The reward jumps a thousand dollars for each gym. You beat the second gym? Two thousand. The fifth? Five thousand. The eight? Eight thousand.

The whole gym route alone is worth 36,000 dollars. It's an amount of money I can't fathom. In the wake of how much I owe the hospital, it's still a drop in the bag, but in the grand scheme of things, most people don't see that much money in their lifetimes. It's why the biggest, baddest trainers are celebrities in their own right. And there's only two kinds of trainers: the hot shots that focus only on their rise to fame and net worth, or the down-to-earth kinds that donate most of their money to charities and shit. There's no in between. They say it's because pokemon battling will either bring out the very best or the very worst in people, but I think it's because people are naturally greedy bastards that will never share their wealth.

I think that, but I consider how much I owe the hospital. I set aside a few dollars for food and stuff the rest in my mattress.

And life continues. I sweat and ache in the furnace room, stitch up pokemon and dress them for mini funerals for the dedicated trainers, and visit mom. She never gives indication of life. Her face is a price tag. Resentment grows in me like bubbling molten rock.

With the resentment grows my impatience and my temper. Hugh is a month into his trip now. He beats Roxie with the help of his new magnemite, and I'm not happy. I'm jealous. He sends letters and more money to me. The urge to rip up the green bills grows in me despite how much I need it. I don't WANT his handouts. I don't NEED his fucking handouts. I send the money back to his mother without a comment, and I can't be bothered to write him back.

I snap more at Golem when he drops things. Especially when I catch him practicing his Shadow Punch on my lunch break. I lash out at him until there's barely a glow in his core and make sure I've put the fear of god in his stupid mechanical heart about battling. With that attitude, he'd be as dead as my parents.

I put in my application to the Nimbasa Gym. I don't care if Elesa is a bitch to work under. I don't care that rent is almost twice what it is out here. I don't even care that I'd get a raise that would nearly double my earnings. Agitation eats at my bones and I'm heated all the time, regardless of the furnaces. Crushing the bones of pokemon becomes therapeutic even though I'm pissed at Cheren for being a high-and-mighty hot-shot who's clearly bitter about his life too. Nearly conquering the League challenge in one go and then being demoted to first gym on the gym circuit? I'd be pissed too.

I stop visiting my mother. It feels good.

The pressure inside me builds and builds. It manifests in terrible nightmares, usually the same one about dragons. I cut and burn my hands more often because I'm not being careful. Golem sulks. I don't care. Let him sulk. He doesn't know any better. I graduated honors. I'm better than this. I deserve better; better money, a better life, a day off, fresh food, a fucking spigot that didn't have gritty water.

And one day when I'm in Cheren's gym, it all boils over.

That's the second kid he's made cry this week. Poor kid has one pokemon left, a little sewaddle that she protects with her arms. She's gotta be what, twelve? Thirteen? I don't hear anything Cheren says, but the girl is nodding so fast. I have her pidove and mareep in the back, a couple of dead bodies. She at least had the right idea—lead with her pidove and use the mareep on his bird. But Brutus had no qualms about tearing the throat out of her sheep and had no issue crunching the bird's ribcage.

The gym worker is healing Cheren's pokemon for the next match. Once Cheren is finished with her, she runs to the sidelines where her parents are waiting on her. In the silence of the room, split by only her crying, I can catch words like, "I'm sorry!" and ". . . Know grandma needed . . . thought I could do it!"

My fists knuckle around my shovel and my hateful gaze hits Cheren. I know this routine. Locals always challenge the gym when they need money in a pinch. A grandma? I envision an old granny needing some sort of medicine and the hospital bills being too much. I know a thing or two about that. It strikes too close to home.

Cheren halts in the middle of the ring. He's staring at me, and I glare right back at him, hoping he feels the venom in my eyes, hoping it spits far enough that it'll burn him from where I stand. He squares up against me, a storm of ice against a storm of fire. He lifts his voice, and it cuts through the muffled din of the crowd.

"Do you have something to say, undertaker?"

My hackles rise. Something about the way he spits the word "undertaker" like I'm as common as the patrats that die in this gym makes my blood boil. I push off the wall with my shovel clutched in hand before I can stop myself.

"Yeah, I've got an issue!" I snap back at him. His eyebrows lift higher, like he wasn't expecting me to lash out at him. I throw my arm out to the girl, who's staring in wide-eyed wonder. "I've got an issue with the way you treat your challengers! In fact, I've got an issue with everything about you, from your holier-than-thou attitude to that stick up your ass!"

Gasps rise up from the crowd. I see his fists clench and the person with his pokeballs is hesitating to give them back, but I don't care. Golem whirs faintly in my ears, but the pounding of my blood drowns him out. I like the look of Cheren's red face. I want to take that stupid red tie of his and yank it until he chokes. Maybe he wouldn't like it if someone brutalized his windpipe for once.

"I don't believe you have a say in the matter," he says in a stage voice. He's making sure everyone hears him. "You don't know anything about gym battling. You are just the undertaker. You shovel the dead. Nothing more. Get back in your place."

"No!" The word whips between us, cracking through the air. My face flushes and my blood rushes. I don't give a fuck what happens. Maybe I'll lose my job. At this rate? Fuck it. I stalk forward until I'm at the edge of the ring, shovel clutched in hand, and I want so much to use it to smash his pretty little jaw apart. "I know enough that you've got the highest death rate of all the gyms in the region! And I know you think you're tough for killing little girls and boys pokemon, but you're not!" I jerk a thumb to the back, where I already have six pokemon from the past three matches to burn. Cheren is fuming. His chest is heaving, and it makes his tie sway. "I get to cremate every pokemon you tear up, Cheren, and I'm tired of cleaning up your mess. You're lashing out this month because you got your ass kicked by Hugh Matisse and you still can't live it down!"

He's grinding his teeth so hard, I wonder if he's shattered his teeth. "You don't know what you're talking about," he spits, both literally and figuratively. He points to the girl who flinches away. "She knew what she was getting into! Everyone who chooses to battle a gym knows the risks. If pokemon die in my gym, it's because they didn't prepare to face the consequences!"

"No, pokemon die in your gym because you hate your job!" I point a finger and flick it at him, snorting, "Trust me, from one person who hates her job to another, I can tell you despise this. And you know why? Because you thought you were some hotshot that could take down the League on his first try and now you're battling newbies! How's it feel, Cheren? Not quite the visions of grandeur you had for yourself?"

The room is deathly quiet. The audience fixates on us, not a shuffle to disturb us. The only noise is Cheren's labored breaths, the jerk of his jaw, the red buildup in his face. He snatches his pokeballs from the gym worker.

My stomach drops.

Cheren throws the shiny Silph Co. ball and out comes Redeye. The rat lunges on all fours. Cheren stands in the center of the ring. "If you think my battling is too violent for your tastes, then prove it." His voice rings out in the gym, pealing like a warning bell. All the anger in me flushes away. A chill runs up my spine when Cheren doesn't take his eyes off me. He scoffs when I freeze up. "If you can't stand up for your ideals, then I don't see why I should change the way I battle. It's effective, and I don't care how many pokemon die in this gym when I'm keeping weak trainers off a gym circuit they're not prepared for. You either fight, or back down."

My mouth opens when he admits it right to my face. The crowd is murmuring now at his unorthodox challenge, and before I can put my ass back where it belongs, an ear-shattering gong splits the air. Golem runs out onto the battlefield, core glowing hot, knocking like tumbling rocks and shaking his fist.

I blanch as white as a white person. "Golem, no! Get back!"

Cheren smiles, his teeth like razors. "I'm going to make you regret that, undertaker. Redeye! Bite!"

Panic splits my veins. "Shadow Punch!" I cry, and I drop my shovel and reach for Golem's pokeball. What are his moves? What does he know? I fumble to open his ball, and I hear him screech. My neck snaps up to see the rat tear through part of his arm, the wisps of his non-corporeal body rising like smoke in the air. He answers with his own attack, his fist glowing purple, and he smashes through the rat and into the floor.

 _God damn his normal types!_

I open his ball and find the little slip of paper inside. My shaking hands struggle to unfold it, and Cheren calls, "Work Up!" and I shout the first attack I see written down.

"Mud Slap!"

The rat glows red and Golem lunges in closer, scoops his hand down, and mud materializes in his palm. It smacks against the patrat's face, and I look down on my cheat list for Golem's registered attacks. It's written in my father's chicken scratch, and it takes me a moment to decipher _mud slap, rollout, shadow punch, iron defense._ That's it? I go for the best defense I can muster.

"Iron Defense!"

"Bite!"

The rat charges and my stomach flips watching Golem cross its arms and a pale blue light flicker over him. He puts his beefy forearms in front, and the rat tries to sink its teeth into him. I wince when the fangs make purchase on my ghost, but this time even though Golem grunts, he slings it off, not as bothered. "Mud Slap!" I shout again. Accuracy, right? I can't let Golem get hit, and blinding that demonic little rat is the best I can do. Golem steps down and kicks up a splash of mud that spatters over the rat's face again. It snarls and thrashes like some possessed thing, but I can still see its giant teeth, see the blurred marks on Golem's body that are damaged, and I want to return him and forfeit so much, but Golem is blazing in a way I've never seen him, the little girl is cheering us on, the crowd is screaming, and all I can think about is the bodies in the other room awaiting a furnace.

Cheren's nose wrinkles, but he's smirking at me. "Work Up!" he says and I hate that he thinks I'm floundering. I hate that I AM floundering. I have one thing left in the world to care about, and he's out on the battlefield right now, hot and angry and defending me, defending that girl.

I look back down on my dad's handwriting. It's not enough to run and defend. I have to attack. I think of my uncle, of the raw power he commands as a trainer, and I lament that the strongest attack we have is Shadow Punch and it's useless against Cheren. "Mud Slap!" I call again, unable to do much more.

"Go wide!" Cheren commands with an ease I don't have. Redeye scampers across the field, and Golem misses. My heart pitches when Cheren's smirk deepens. "Bite!"

"Get out of there!" I scream at Golem. I take a step forward and grab my shovel again, intent on bashing the rat's head myself if I have to. "Run, Golem, RUN!"

My child-sized Golett whines and turns, pelting across the field and toward me. The rat chases him, much faster, and it overtakes him. I watch helplessly as it leaps, overbite primed, and Golem trips, face-planting on the ground. Redeye sails over him and lands near me. I wind up the shovel in case it gets closer, but it turns its eyes back on Golem.

"Bite!"

"Iron Defense!"

Golem curls up and protects his head and face. He knows Cheren's battling style too. My heart drops from my ribcage when the rat's Bite lands on Golem's forearm again instead of his neck. Mud Slap isn't working. I need to hit harder!

"Rollout!"

Golem winds up with the patrat attached and hurtles to the floor. He crashes on top of the rat, and I wince, hear a squeak, and and Golem tumbles out of his roll and on his butt. He scrambles to his feet, and I stand with my heart slamming against my throat, but the rat is twitching. It's hurt. It won't get back up. Cheren returns him. I catch his face. He's redder than a tomato berry and bubbling like a volcano about to erupt, but the raw panic has bled from me. We . . . we won. I look back at Golem who seems to realize it too. He cher-chunks with excitement, gesturing and hoping for validation from me.

A pokeball pops open. My neck snaps to Cheren who's released his pidove, Chinook. Golem hums a low warning, and my stomach churns so badly I'm afraid I'll taste my breakfast again.

"What are you doing?"

Cheren glares at me. I can barely hear him above the screaming crowd—whether they cheer for him, me, or against us, I can't tell. What I can hear is Cheren's venomous, "This is a gym battle, undertaker! If you want to beat me, you have to fight all of my pokemon!"

"You can't do that!" I can't believe him! It's not fair! "I only have one pokemon, asshole! Battles are supposed to be one-on-one!"

"And gym rules are different!" Cheren snaps. "You should have thought about that before challenging me!" He extends his hand. "Chinook! Gust!"

I hear my father's voice in my head, leading me in those stupid nursery rhymes, singing, _Flying types stay above the ground zone, it's best to kill two birds with one stone._ The wind batters us, and Golem, klutzy as he is can't keep his footing. My mouth opens of its own accord. "Rollout!"

Golem hurtles forward again, curling up like the lumpiest blue cannonball I've ever seen and rocketing towards the bird. He leaps up, crashes into it, and the pidove squawks and screeches in anger.

"Leer!"

I start, shocked at the switch up. Cheren doesn't—oh fucking god. He's setting up for his little devil dog. Brutus. What am I supposed to do about that thing? If he sets up his Work Up, I'm done for! Golem—with that Bite, Golem will—

Golem keeps rolling. He's picked up speed now, and despite the uncertain wiggle in his trajectory, he bounces back up to the bird and knocks it out of the sky. Chinook hits the ground and Golem plows over the thing like a car wheel over roadkill. The bird crunches. I can't be white anymore; I can practically taste the bile in my throat, and I know my pallor is an unsightly green.

 _What am I supposed to do about his lillipup?_

Golem tumbles out of his Rollout again when Cheren releases an audible snarl and returns his bird—it returns. We haven't killed it. Somehow. Golem might have broken every bone in the thing's body, but it's still alive after that.

Someone touches my arm and I jump clear out of my jimmies. I nearly swipe at the kid with my shovel, and I see the little girl by my side. She's—She's proffering me a potion. She shoves it into my stomach when I can't force my hands to grab it. "Take it!" she says to me. She looks up at me, tears shining in her eyes, and she says, "You get one potion for the match, so use mine! You can't let him win, he's—he's a bully!"

Cheren's next pokeball pops open before I can get a word in edgewise. "Golem!" I cry. He looks back at me, and I furiously gesture him over. "Come here!"

"That's against the rules, undertaker!" Cheren snaps when Golem approaches. It dawns on me that the idiot doesn't even know my name. "You're not allowed outside help!"

I hate him. I fucking hate his guts, and if he's not careful, the last thing he'll be worried about his my pokemon. I shake a fist at him from across the field. "You get your potions supplied by the gym! It doesn't matter where I get mine!" and I spitefully spray Golem's deteriorating arms. The twisted energies holding him together smooth out, and the puncture marks, tiny black dots, disappear. And even though fear paralyzes my veins, and even though that kid is getting on my nerves with her heart eyes for me, I want to beat him. I want to make Cheren eat his words. I want to humiliate him right here, right now, in his own gym, in front of all these people. I want to make him eat shit for how many pokemon he's killed, and in particular, I want to crush that little murdering dog of his and shatter all of its teeth so it'll never Bite someone again.

"Work Up!" Cheren shouts, and his voice is frayed, like he's at the end of his line.

I remind myself of our defenses. We can weather these hits. We HAVE to. "Iron Defense!" I call one more time, and that familiar light I like so much flickers over Golem like a passing street light.

"Work Up!"

He's got to catch up with Golem's defenses. He gleams like an iron wall, so I call, "Rollout!" and hope the attack builds enough to crush the lillipup before it damages us too much.

Golem winds up and shoots off like an unsteady dreidel before gaining traction. He whips into the dog who takes the attack too easily for my taste. "Work Up!" Cheren shouts again, and dread fills my throat like swallowed cotton. He's going to hit too hard. That Bite is going to tear the life out of Golem. I want to pull him back so bad, but Golem is ringing like stones raining on a gong, I've got this little gremlin pinning all her hopes on me, and hysterical dismay tears through me. ME? She wants to pin her hopes and dreams on ME? She's out of her damn mind and is a terrible judge of character!

Across the field, Golem tumbles to a stop again, this time catching himself on his hands. He turns around and launches off again, and I look to Cheren. He's sweating. The heat has flushed from his cheeks and into his neck where his jugular presses out like he's swallowed a baseball. "Bite!" he screams, and every hair on my body raises—

He's going for the throat.

Golem goes hurtling forward straight towards Brutus and his sunken black fangs, and I scream, "Stop! Stop, Golem! Mud Slap!" Golem swivels out of his attack, stumbling and tripping and trying to stop his momentum. Mud flings wildly. I think some of it hits the dog, but my heartstrings freeze and snap in terror when the dog latches its black teeth into Golem's throat.

A blood-curdling scream echoes out of Golem. I cry out when he screeches like nails on a chalkboard. His body dissipates from the hit. Pale purple smoke curls up from his body, and the lillipup tightens its jaw and crunches down. Golem staggers about, dying right in front of my eyes, and I freeze.

I fucking freeze.

Golem thrashes with this thing attached to his throat, and more smoke pours from him. The surface of his body cracks like a film of ice over water. He's not dead. He's suffering. He's got his hands up around the lillipup's head as it tears and yanks on my golett like a chew toy, and Golem makes strained noises I've never heard before. His life force pours out of him, manifesting in that horrible mist that covers the battlefield.

Cheren crosses his arms and rocks back on his heels. "Brutus, Bite again. Go for the core."

My eyes snap to Golem's core. It flickers madly like a heartbeat in a seizure, but it's still bright. All the tension slacks from me. He's still alive. The lillipup lets go, and Golem stumbles to a knee, but he's still ALIVE. The lillipup opens its mouth for the killing blow.

"Mud Slap!"

I need that thing to MISS this next attack, and Golem reacts, reeling in pain but swiping out and smacking the unsuspecting dog in the face with a cake of mud. I don't wait for Cheren's counterattack. I scream, "Rollout!" and Golem rolls over the disoriented dog. It doesn't do much yet since the dog flips back to its feet, snarling like it's a houndoom, and I realize my mistake: I keep stopping him. I keep pulling Golem back from his Rollout when I need to let him go. I need him to gain as much momentum as I can and CRUSH that mutt.

Cheren's body weight shifts when he realizes we haven't given up yet. "Bite!"

The dog charges. I see Golem slowing to stop and turn around, and I shout, "Keep going! Don't stop, Golem! Faster!" He wobbles like a wheel with no support. Then, his hand shoots out and though he loses speed, he uses his palm as a pivot to keep moving. They collide. Golem screeches again, and I know that Bite is killing him, but he keeps rolling. The dog makes the mistake of keeping its teeth sunk into him. Golem is picking up speed now, and the dog whaps against the floor once, twice—three times before it lets go. We've knocked the wind out of it. While Golem turns for another pass, the lillipup eats its oran berry.

"Bite!"

My eyes widen when Golem hits the recovering Lillipup. It yelps and tumbles back in the dirt at the force of the hit. Cheren spasms like he put his finger in an electrical socket. "I invoke the right to use my potion!" he snaps, and the dog limps back to his side for healing.

"Don't stop, Golem!" I dig in my heels and spread my legs. Golem continues to keep his speed, whipping around the battlefield in a great blue whir. By the time Cheren sends his dog back out on the field, I point and give him no quarter.

"Crush it!"

"Bite! Go for its core!"

But Cheren's too focused on the killing blow. The lillipup hesitates to attack at the last second, unable to reach Golem's core with him curled up in a ball. His Bite skims off Golem's opposite shoulder, and I see more of Golem dissipate into smoke, but he plows into the dog like an unforgiving truck. His momentum carries him straight through the dumb mutt, and it squeals and falls back. Golem zooms around the field, faster and more graceful than I've ever seen him before. My heartbeat is flying. Cheren's chest heaves so fast he might be hyperventilating.

He can't take another hit, and he knows it.

I oblige him.

"Golem! One more time!"

"Bite it! BITE IT!"

Golem zooms in like a freight train. The dog shakes—it's not charging, it's waiting for the hit, and it costs him. Golem flattens the dog like roadkill. It's body crunches and snaps. Golem comes flying out of his Rollout with uncontrollable speed, and the graceless dope flips head over feet multiple times before he skids to a stop, flat on his face. My heart stops. It's dead silent in the room now. I can hear Cheren's labored breaths across the field. He's shaking. He's pale as the dead.

The referee steps out on the field of battle to check the dog even though it's my job and he's technically not supposed to touch the bodies. If they're dead, it's a hygienic thing, germs of the dead, you're not allowed to touch, only me in my big-ass gloves. But I can't move. I've locked my knees, and I think I'm losing blood flow down there, but I'm light-headed, so clearly my blood isn't flowing anywhere anymore. Golem rocks back up to his feet with a wince, clutching his throat that Cheren tried to tear out, but he's a ghost. He didn't have any main arteries and airflow there. It's why he survived.

The referee stands and looks to Cheren who looks like—heh, like he's seen a ghost. "Alive," the ref says. He drops the red flag to Cheren and raises the yellow challenger flag to me. "Match end! Cheren's pokemon are unable to battle! The undertaker is the winner!"

The sound wave of cheers that blasts from the stands knocks me off my feet. I collapse on my ass because I can't feel my legs, and all of a sudden the blood is rushing again, I'm seeing spots and my knees down sting like a thousand needles stabbing me from the inside. Golem's core brightens, twinkles, and he does a little jump, waves to the crowd, and then he hunches over again because he's in so much pain. But he glows. He glows from the inside out with light and joy and pride. I've never seen him shine like this.

I stand up. I find my voice.

"What the hell do you think you were doing!" I shout. Golem whirls and cringes. He looks down at his feet, and I grab him and shake him. "Are you out of your damn mind? You could have died! You're DISSIPATING you stupid twit! Shit, shit—" And my hands join his at his neck, where he's still losing the most purplish smoke. I'd heard ghosts dissipate when they "die" again, but this is my first time SEEING it. I've never seen his corporeal form disintegrating in patches, cracking and peeling like a spiderweb on sunburned skin.

Something metallic clinks near me. The rectangle badge flips face up and I see Cheren stalking away. "Hey!" I shout. I pick up the badge and throw it at him. "I don't want your fucking badge, I want you to stop slaughtering pokemon because of your fucking wounded pride!" Even though the badge hits him square on the back, he ignores me completely. "Hey! I'm talking to you, prick!"

Cheren disappears into the back. One of the gym workers comes forward, and I grab my shovel, ready to defend Golem if I have to, but he comes with a potion. He helps patch Golem's wounds, saying, "You should let me take him to the Pokemon Center. He's going to need—"

I return Golem, and I snap, "I'M taking him to the Pokemon Center. Cheren can suffer a schedule delay after that stunt he pulled."

And I stalk out.

The next morning, an envelope is delivered to me with the badge, a check and a certificate. A thousand dollars. Just like that. I trounced Cheren, made him a laughingstock with one pokemon, and now I'm swimming in more than a year's wages.

There's another letter. Nimbasa Gym wants an interview with me.

I show Golem the shiny gym badge that's a lot heavier than I expect. It's not until the day after when I've slept the edge off my fears and worries that I can say, "Look." A smile curves up my mouth. "You did good."

He glows. I like the look on him. I pat his shoulder, get ready for work, and before I go, I glare at him. "Don't get any ideas. This isn't going to be a regular thing." He has the good graces to look sheepish and I return him.

I go to work. Cheren avoids my gaze throughout his entire day of matches. He doesn't kill a single pokemon, but still manages to win near-flawless matches. Funny, how that works. You can battle without going for the kill. Who knew, right?

My night ends early without any pokemon to cremate today. It's a good day. I find out that I'm on the front page. I skim the newspaper that both lauds and vilifies me for what I said, but at least they call Cheren out on his shit for making me battle him. Tch, for my IDEALS. Ideally everyone would stay out of my fucking business and try not to slaughter their pokemon for money and fame, but what do I know?

And then, I go to the hospital. I go see my mother and sit down next to her. There's not much gusto in me, but I hold up the badge.

"Beat Cheren yesterday. Didn't get to see you. Had to pick up Golem from the Pokemon Center. He's . . . He's fine. A real scrapper. Should have seen him." I fall silent and twiddle the badge in my hand. It's just another reminder. I've been wasting away in a furnace room instead of living my life. I'm talented and smart, and I can budget the hell out of money. I graduated honors. Golem and I beat Cheren without losing a single pokemon. Not only do I have the intelligence for excavations like I wanted to do when I graduated, but I could even make it decent at the gym circuit if I chose. I look at the bed where my mom lies still.

My brow darkens. After stewing on it for so long and putting things off for so long, I think I'm ready to face it. I'm ready to own up to my selfish patterns. I'm going to do something for myself for once. And fuck what the world thinks. I'm doing it for ME. I'm through sifting through the ashes of my life, and the first thing that has to happen is going to happen tonight.

I stand. I pat her cold hand and blast a heavy breath out. "Look Ma," I say. I shrug. "Don't take it personal, okay? I don't know if you'd want me to do this or not, live like this or not, but the choice isn't yours anymore. It's mine." My upper lip quivers a moment before I stiffen it. I hike my chin up. "Sorry, Ma," I say again, but this time, my voice is faint, like the breath of the wind in the distant trees. "I can't wait anymore. I've got a chance to finally get somewhere and make it, and . . . I'm taking it."

With that said, I leave her side. The beep of the machine tracking her heartbeat fades from my ears as I head back down the halls to the front desk. Karen looks up at me. "Josephine?"

My jaw ticks. My brow cinches, and I wonder how angry I look to her when I tell her with no inflection,

"Pull the plug."


	5. Chapter 5

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thanks for the review, Daveorn! Hope I can keep you hooked cause this has been fun to write!

Thanks to TrainerIndigo, and yes, the golett's name IS Golem. I definitely gained a newfound love of b2/w2 after this nuzlocke!

And thanks to... Smarfla? Farmla? I see you, and I see your beautiful lengthy review, and I applaud your well-crafted vitriol and the dedication to finishing it. Sorry not sorry, but I'll write what I like and have fun while doing it. But! Thanks for bumping my review count buddy! Makes my story look better!

* * *

 **"I feel so much better**

 **Now that you're gone forever**

 **I tell myself that I don't miss you at all**

 **I'm not lying, denying, that I feel so much better**

 **Now that you're gone forever"**

 **Gone Forever _ Three Days Grace**

* * *

I don't have a funeral for her.

Funerals are expensive. I don't even have a service for her. I let the undertaker—for humans—burn her up and I put her in a cheap urn. It's pretty, but cheap, because I've spent enough money on her. I don't invite family or friends over, but I do send a few letters out: one for my uncle, one for some distant half-cousin on my mom's side, my father's half sister, and Hugh. Despite not welcoming anyone, Hugh's mother and Molly come over and warm my dingy apartment with food and flowers.

It's . . . nice. They make it a bigger deal than it needs to be, but at least they're kind. And now I have a whole casserole that should last me for a couple days.

More importantly, my life seems to be moving right on track now that I've cut the dead weight off my back. It's a relief to see the debt to the hospital STOP climbing for once. Instead, it will finally shrink, and it feels like I've entered the Twilight Zone just thinking about such a thing. It all feels surreal, really. I've got a job interview in Nimbasa. (The same terrible job, but still, a pay raise.) I'm renting out an apartment in Nimbasa, and I'll move in after this weekend. I'm using the money Hugh gave me to buy a train ticket, pay the down payment on my new apartment, and buy a potion to keep handy for Golem in case the numbnut gets frisky picking fights again. Beating Cheren netted me the cash I needed to pack up my life and move. My heart beats for once in my chest.

I think I'll leave my old mattress behind. Invest in a nice bed. Maybe sleep better for once.

I turn in my two week's notice to Edwards, and it's such a pleasure to see the shock on his face. He's going to have to scramble to find someone to replace me, and I relish in the little vindictive win against him. Find someone else to abuse with your shit pay and hours. I take a few days off with my stockpile of vacation and sick hours.

It's the Saturday before I leave for Nimbasa. My train heads out Monday. I head to the one place with any belongings left to my family: a storage yard. It's a decrepit place on the south side of Asperita City that's all gravel, invasive weeds and cigarette butts. I talk to the guy, show him my I.D. and he hands me a rusted key for the Ebele storage shed. Golem totters behind me like an overgrown child, pulling the wheelbarrow and touching the dandelions as he goes. I stop in front the red shutter with 3C on it. I turn the key in the square slot, swing open the panel and press a button. The locks holding it shut spring open, and the garage door shifts up. I stuff the key in my pocket, reach down, and I heft the sliding door up, shoving at it when rust grinds against the wheels.

It smells like dust and mold. Fitting, I have to say. And there's not much in there. There's an antique wood table of my mother's that I hadn't had the heart to part with when I had to move out of our old house. House payments might have been to expensive, and that large, beautiful table wouldn't fit in my apartment, but I'd be damned if I had let it go.

I walk two steps into the shed and put my hands against the edge of the table. I wipe the dust away to reveal the border pattern of maple leaves. I think she said my gramps made it. Mother's side. I don't want to part with it now, but really? Will I ever use it?

I know I won't. I'll live and die alone. I might as well sell it.

I check the storage bins on top of the table. The first one is full of my baby things that my mother would have wanted. I don't care. It's trash. Next is my stack of archeology books, both old textbooks and easy reading. Trivia books. All my nerdy shit. I heft the tote and put it on the wheelbarrow.

Golem whirs and pats at a box too high for him to reach. I pull it down and fold open the cardboard. It's full of paper. Pictures in frames and stacks of pictures out of frames, old bills and tax returns. My heart tightens seeing a stack of well-loved letters with twines of string holding them together. My father's handwriting. Golem picks them up and I scowl. I snatch the letters away from him.

"No," I tell him. He whines. I shake my head and toss them back in the box. "They're just clutter. Don't look at me like that, they're just going to take up room." I do take a few pictures, making sure to at least get one of each of us and a couple family pictures. I even take the one at one of my birthday parties where I shoved Hugh's face into my cake. I take the legal files. I hand them to Golem to put in the wheelbarrow. I move on, and he sneaks my father's letters out with the pictures. I let him sneak them. What's the point of fighting him if he's just going to sulk if I don't take them? Sentimental idiot.

My parent's bed frame leans against the wall, and so does their mattress. There's a box full of blankets and sheets and pillows. I thin the box of anything I won't use and set it on the table. There are seasonal items stored in the back, stupid decorative shit and a tree I've never bothered to put up for Christmas. There's a box of old tapes, both movies and home movies. Golem whines and is so persistent about taking the home videos that I take those out and throw them in the box to take with me. There's mom's old clothes, dad's old clothes, a mess of shoes, and too many hangers. I hate it. I'd like to burn the remnants of it all, just so I don't have to think about any of it anymore. It'll at least go to the dumpster and I won't have to pay that quarter every week to keep the shed.

There are old trophies and school accomplishment things, like when I took a small foray into playing the clarinet. I was always shit at the clarinet. Those participation trophies can go to the dump as well. I find a small jewelry box in the corner. I toss it in the cardboard box, fold up the flaps, and carry it out to the wheelbarrow.

I plunk the box down just in time to see someone crossing the yard. I scowl at him. I turn around back into the storage shed, hoping there was something else I could take or something, but this is really all I want. I don't need the couch, and the armchair is too old and rickety to be worth it. The only thing left worth something other than vapid nostalgia is the custom table that I could make a good buck with.

The person knocks on the storage shed. "Josey."

I groan and lean back with the most disdain I can muster. "What do you WANT."

"I loved your mother too, Josey. The least I could do is visit her grave and make sure her daughter is doing well."

I whirl around on him. "Oh SURE," I spit. I point a finger at him. "You didn't love my mother enough to help me with the bills, Mr. Money Bags. You didn't drop a dime to help pay for shit, I know how much you care."

His jaw flexed and he crossed his arms. The muscles there bunched up like fucking balloons, and I knew how easily he could snap a person in half. "Don't you try to pin that on me," he growled. "I would have helped you, but you had to be stubborn as a mule and prideful to boot! You're the one who didn't want my CHARITY. You turned your back on family, Josey, not me." My jaw tightens and ticks at his admission. I hike my chin up, daring him to clock me on the mouth.

There's a tense moment between us. Golem whirs uncertainly when neither of us gives quarter, and then he inches forward. The man's stern demeanor shifts into a smile, and he drops his arms. "Hey there, Golem. I saw you had a great gym battle." Golem exclaims and bounds forward, plunking into his stomach with a big hug. He laughs and pats Golem's head, and I can't help the annoyance that Golem gets along with him. "Seems like you and Josey really have what it takes to be battlers," he suggests, and he looks up at me with a light twinkling in his eyes. "A real talent for it. Seems like it runs in the family."

"Oh shut the fuck up," I mutter. I lean against the table and cross my arms and glare at him. "So what is it? I know good ol' Uncle Marshal doesn't come down from his castle unless it's important. What do you want?"

Marshal cocks his brow at me. "I came to show my respect for your mother, brat." I roll my eyes; I'm not ten years old anymore. "Left her some daffodils. Her favorite, right?"

"A narcissus for a narcissus."

He doesn't like my salty quip. I shrug. What did he expect? Marshal glances into the shed I've ransacked, and he asks, "What's all this?"

I gesture aimlessly. "A dead woman's loot. I'm taking what I want and getting rid of this shit."

"You're getting rid of it?"

"I don't have a use for any of the rest of it," I say. "I don't have the room for any of it. It's just extra shit that's gonna waste away in this room, so I'm getting rid of it. Feel free to take what you want."

He frowns. "You're getting rid of the table too?"

I shift. It IS a family heirloom from my mother's side. "Was gonna sell it. You want it?"

"I'll take it if you're pawning it off. You might decide you want it some day."

I snort under my breath. Yeah right. I don't need a big family table when it's just going to be little ol' me. And a ghost who doesn't eat.

Marshal stares at me for a long moment. Even in casual jeans and a t-shirt, he's massive, his muscles straining out of the fabric of his shirt. He trains too much with his fighting type pokemon. I guess if he wants that fat paycheck from the Pokemon League he'd have to keep up his edge as part of the Elite Four. He glances down at the little wheelbarrow of things I'm taking and back at the shed full of everything my family has left, and he finally mutters, "So this is where you're taking your life now?"

I frown. "What?"

"You're leaving it all behind. Not even that, you're cutting all ties with what's left of your family, is that it?" He glares at me. I turn my nose up, but Marshal gestures to the shed and says, "You're literally throwing it all away." He snaps his fingers. "Oh, expect for the table, a family heirloom. You're selling that for a little extra cash."

He strikes me in a place I don't want touched. I leap to my feet, and heat scorches my cheeks. "Look, you're not in charge of my life. I can make my own decisions. I didn't ask you here, and I don't want you here! If you want to pay your respects to my ma, she's out in the cemetery!" I point my finger in the vague direction of the graveyard. "She's six feet under and clearly better at conversation than I am!"

"What's your issue, Josephine Uzochi Ebele?" My shoulders lift defensively when he spits my middle name like he's my father. He puts his hands on his hips and walks closer to the edge of the doorway, leaving only a couple feet between us. I glare until I'm sure I'll pop a blood vessel in my temple. "So desperate to be your own person you'll literally kill your family and any memories of them?"

I point to the stack of letters from my father in the wheelbarrow. "I'm not killing anything. I'm keeping some sentimental shit. I've got pictures. I've got Pa's letters. And I sure as hell didn't kill my mother, she's been dead for years!"

Marshal mimics my scowl and shakes his head. "Whatever, kid. You keep telling yourself what you need to sleep at night. I can't make you care about your family when all you care about is yourself."

"Shut up." I want to punch him right in his face. I know I've got a mean right hook, but I know better than to fight Marshal. He could put me into the dirt. "You don't know shit about me. You don't know how I've lived. I've made my choice and if that body out in the dirt had to suffer for it, then fine. My conscience can handle it. I'm getting out of this shit hole. I'm not cleaning up after Cheren's messes anymore. And you can't tell me a god damn thing about how to live my life, got it?"

Marshal's gaze is cold on me. It feels like a chilled hospital syringe pulling the blood out of me, and something in my chest shakes. Finally, Marshal blasts out a breath. He rubs his hand over his face. His gaze settles on me again, and this time, he looks more tired than angry. "Right," he mutters. "Right . . . You're leaving Aspertia?"

He's ripped and threatening by default, but the tension has slacked from his arms. The fight's drained out of him. I relax a little and lean my butt against the table again. "Yeah," I tell him. "Heading out to Nimbasa on Monday."

"Good," he says. He looks away from me, and one of his fingers taps against his bicep. "You'll be safer out there. Trying to get admitted into Nimbasa University, right? You're a smart kid. You'll—"

"Wait a second," I interrupt him. I give him an incredulous look. "Safer? What's that supposed to mean?"

His lips thin. "Can't say. Just glad you're getting some distance from it all."

I frown. A chill slithers up my spine. "Does this have . . . Y'know, to do with . . ." I point east to Virbank. "All that?"

There's a veiled look on his face. He's holding something back from me when he says, "All what?"

I know no one's supposed to know about the Virbank gym. But Marshal's one of the Elite Four. I know he knows what went down in that gym. He has to. It suddenly hits me why he's battering around the bush.

"Wait . . . You mean . . ." I dip my voice and lean forward to him, whispering, "You think this is Plasma all over again?"

His knuckles tighten on his biceps. "I'm not at liberties to share anything," he says, "but I'm glad you're a girl who's always had her wits about her. Nimbasa is a far safer place right now, big city or not."

My heart does a little jump in my chest. Plasma. Team Plasma was coming back. And . . . They slaughtered the Virbank gym?

A rock sits low in my stomach. Bunch of glory-seeking assholes or not, the Elite Four is a defense organization. So are the gym leaders. It's why when Team Plasma went on a terroristic streak of thievery and murder two years ago, the gym leaders and Elite Four all banded together to stop them. It was the most active they'd been in years, and yeah, my Uncle Marshal had been at the center of it all. Got his ass kicked by the crown prince N in the process, but it's hard to compete against legendary electric dragons.

But . . . Team Plasma had fractured from the inside out. The ones with more honest motivations for actual battle reform siding with N and the extremists following that mass-murderer Ghetsis. It's why the gym leaders and Elite Four had changed so much in the last year. Brycen, the ice leader, eschewed his post as a gym leader in order to pursue his acting career. (He wasn't a bad actor, actually.) Supreme ninja or not, they replaced him with a gym in Virbank. Lenora Aloe retired her post to focus more on archeology and run the Nacarene Museum with her husband; Cheren picked up her post in Aspertia. Even though she'd been doing the same thing as Cheren, with her trademark Retaliate instead of Bite, she reformed her choices, and I looked up to her more for that.

The Striaton Triplets also faded into obscurity with their small restaurant. Some water trainer up north replaced them.

Most shockingly, Alder was dethroned from his position as Champion. Iris Airisu came through with her dragons, slaughtering most of the pokemon of the Elite Four and Alder in order to become Champion herself. It was a time of unrest. Alder pushed for honest battle reform alongside Grimsley and, actually, my power-hungry uncle. Marshal at least had his finer points, and choosing not to slaughter pokemon was one of them.

However, Shauntal and Caitlin thought otherwise. And so did Iris. When Iris dethroned Alder as Champion, nearly all reform ground to a halt. She's a cruel woman who believes in "old fashioned" battling to the death, where the powerful triumph and the weak perish. She decimates all those she battles and refuses to allow any idea of reform to enter the political sphere. Supposedly, in the year where the power shifted from Alder to Iris, Alder managed to get some sort of underground battling arena in Nimbasa to function as the "trial" for reformed battling. Champion Iris has tried multiple times to tear it down, but she can't legally do anything about it yet. I don't know the logistics of it all, but she's a very bitter, vengeful woman.

I frown at Marshal. The whole region had split when Team Plasma pushed reform. It split families. It split battling teams. It split the Elite Four and even Team Plasma itself. I doubt anyone would ever agree on the battling issue, my own beliefs aside. This country would burn in civil war again. The two dragons scorched the earth the first time, and the second time, they nearly did it again. A third time? A shiver wracks my spine. Heroes of Truth and Ideals would destroy us all if Team Plasma resurfaced and stirred the pot one last time.

"I'll watch out for myself," I tell Marshal. I don't know what else to say. He's obstinate, just like me, but I know he cares. Hell, he came off fucking Mount Olympus to see me when he had no obligation to. Maybe I was being a dick.

I scuff my toe in the dirt. Marshal grunts, saying, "Good. Glad to see you've got the smarts and the battling skills to back it up." He pauses. I watch him chew the inside of his cheek before he adds, "And stay away from the docks. There's pirates about, and they're not playing dress up."

My brows cinch in a frown. He sounds ridiculous, but the weight in his words makes me think twice about teasing him. I glance at Golem before I tell him, "I have to take a ferry to Castelia to get to Nimbasa. I've already got my ticket."

His entire face pinches. He rubs a hand over his brows and takes a deep breath. "You leave Monday?"

I shift. Something is WRONG. "Yeah." I give him another look, harder this time, and I ask, "Uncle Marshal, WHAT is it? What's going on?"

Marshal nods like it's a yes or no question. "You've been too close to it already. Just keep your head low. Don't go digging."

A grin cracks my features before I can stop it. "I want to be an archaeologist, Uncle Marshal, all I do is dig." He glares at me with such heat that the smile flies off my face. I put up my hands. "Sorry. Sorry."

Marshal huffs. His shoulders slump, and he puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. He looks up at me. "Josey. Just . . . I know we haven't gotten along too much over the years, but look. You're all the family I've got." I look away from him. "I'll do what I can to keep you safe. Hear me?"

I nod and try not to let him get to me too much. "I hear you," I mutter.

"Good. You're behind the grind, so you better get cracking if you want to enroll in Nimbasa University." I bob my head again, looking down at his shadow on the ground. He rocks back on his heels. "I'll send someone for the table and to clear this junk out. Think I'll swing by Floccesy Town and see Alder." Right. His mentor. Marshal hesitates one more time. "Take care of yourself, Josey."

"Sure . . ."

He leaves. I grind my steel toed boot through the dirt and gravel. He's sort of a dick, but he's the good sort. And he's at least given me a heads up on the resurgence of Team Plasma. In pirate uniforms? I guess. I'll just keep far away from the docks after I get to Nimbasa, which will be easy since Nimbasa doesn't have a port.

I shut the storage unit and lock it back. Golem is standing by the wheelbarrow. I frown down at my father's letters. I look back up at my pokemon.

"You ready to go?" I ask him. He lights up like a warm sunrise. "I've got to pack and get things shipped to Nimbasa. And then we'll finally be out of this shithole."

Golem agrees with a little whine, and he picks up the wheelbarrow and pushes it behind me. I give the key back to the guy managing this place and head back to my apartment to pack.

Over the weekend, I think about visiting my mother's grave one more time. Disdain or not, she was my mother. Marshal may have had . . . a SMALL point. Give her some of those stupid flowers. Tell her "I love you" or some shit.

But I don't. My eyes are focused forward. I pack. I get my tickets in order. I send my things ahead and come Monday, I meet Marshal by the pier—no pirates around—and I'm off on a ferry to Castelia. And in the end?

I don't look back.


End file.
